Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 52

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A7 vs A11

What's the difference between the two and why do we need a new criterion? It seems that they both work off the same principle outlined in Wikipedia:Credible claim of significance, and one of them is merely broader than the other, so why not just group them together? It makes no difference if the subject is a newly invented drinking game or word, web content (i.e. memes), people, organizations, and events, even if they were real, so this could simply go under A7b or whatever it is in the Twinkle interface. (G6 for example is split into 6 or 7 deletion reasons using the Twinkle interface, and A7 could reasonably be interpreted into the same.) TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 11:12, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

They do both run off of significance, but A11 isn't quite the same as the categories of A7. The categories of A7 are well-defined and (by and large) mutually exclusive: they categorize the different concrete types of subjects to which there is consensus to apply A7. A11, though, is different: it doesn't talk about the type of subject (since it could be a drinking game, a new religion, a new word, anything); instead, it talks about the state of a subject. So, I think the idea is to not complicate A7 even further (it's complicated enough already) with new categories that aren't quite the same kind of thing as the old ones, and instead just keep it as a separate criterion. Besides, what would we really gain from merging them? (As an aside, this has actually been discussed in the past, and the consensus seemed to be pretty clear to keep them separate, IIRC; it's probably in these archives somewhere.) Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 11:23, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

The main difference is that A11 is two parts, like A9. There has to be the obvious made up element ('created in November 2013 in the Rainbow Unicorn pub by Shane and Wayne Bloggs...') and the total lack of any credible notability or even significance. This covers drinking games (Beer Pong reinvented Mark 39), new words (but not ones used in business contexts - those have a certain claim to significance and should be prodded), and similar. Things like the monster in the wood behind the school are hoaxes. A11 assumes good faith from the poster (OK, sometimes this may be mistaken), but hoax assumes intent to deceive. A7 is limited to living (or once living) things with names, web content, and organised events (which obviously are for living things) but not spontaneous ructions or brawls. A11 is to cover things that screamingly obviously have to go because outside a group of ten people or so, no-one has heard of it or gives a damn. Like most CSD stuff, it IS limited. I've declined a few so far. Peridon (talk) 11:47, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

There has been discussion as to whether A11 should be in with hoax (or A7), and A9 with A7. Both suggestions were rejected as they were considered to be different in nature, especially as they are both dual criteria. That would be hard to build into A7. As I say above, A11 assumes good faith, but hoax doesn't. Peridon (talk) 11:54, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

See extensive discussion at Archive 50 and Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 51#RfC: Does Wikipedia need three different CSD criterion for "No indication of importance.22 or should they all be merged into one" DES ^(talk) 14:11, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, how many A11s are we actually using? DGG ( talk ) 20:54, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I find 20 items in the last 5000 deletions with the string "A11" in the logged reason. DES ^(talk) 22:31, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

As tempting as it sometimes seems to merge CSD categories, I think it works better this way 'cause there are fundamental differences. There was a time we deleted A11 as confabulated nonsense (at least I did). Then someone said nonsense meant random keystrokes as if keyboard cat was creating articles. And so we started using G3 for plain creative writing foolishness. That's not fair as some people don't mean to vandalize, they just have no idea how stuffy strict we are here. A11 fits the bill for things like Torgona, which I did not know at the time was really G11. Dlohcierekim 22:57, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

A7 invalid if a source is present?

Coffee added the text "The presence of a relevant and reliable source is considered a credible claim of significance, and disqualifies an article from being deleted under this criterion." to the A7 section, which was reverted by Secret with the summary "that needs to be discussed in the talk page at it simply opens an unwanted Pandora's box". This idea has been floated before IIRC, but I now think it might have some merit. Particularly when source is qualified by "relevant and reliable" should the mere presence of such a source be a good reason not to use an A7 speedy? Let's discuss that please. DES ^(talk) 21:10, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Define reliable and define relevant. Nick (talk) 21:12, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I would take "reliable" to be the same meaning that it has in WP:RS. Indeed if I were adding that text I would have it link there. Relevant would probably mean "relevant to the alleged claim of significance". Do you think debates over what is a relevant source would be just as bad or worse than debates over what is a "claim of significance"? DES ^(talk) 21:16, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

When having a source is a claim of notability, how do you define a relevant source? -- John Reaves 21:19, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely so. There are already concerns about so called tabloid papers being disqualified from use as a reliable sources, especially with biographies of living people, but also across a number of different subjects areas - that battle still simmers along at WP:RS. The relevance thing is my more immediate concern, new articles don't always have enough content (and context) to make it readily apparent what a reference refers to, and I don't want to see a situation where disputes arise between the article creator, the reviewer who nominates it for deletion, the administrator who reviews the deletion nomination and other editors about whether the article should be deleted. Nick (talk) 21:29, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:N and its myriad subpages generally diretct users towards having multiple sources as the guideline for inclusion. -- John Reaves 21:19, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Remember that this claim of significance is a significantly lower standard than WP:N. Also, relevant would mean relevant to the article's topic... I would think that to be self-explanatory. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 21:21, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

@Secret: - I'm interested as to why you think this will be a "unwanted Pandora's box". — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 21:24, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)I think this could add an undesirable hurdle for new page patrollers, and could be very contentious. For example, a company's newly created web page is relevant and reliable for establishing that they exist, but that would not be considered a credible claim of significance. The same would apply to press releases, trivial mentions and other type of sources that are reliable in narrow circumstances, but do little to establish notability or significance. - MrX 21:25, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
  • A company's newly created webpage is relevant but not reliable... reliable means what it's always meant on Wikipedia. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 21:28, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
    • Actually a company's website usually is reliable, what it isn't is independent, and so it has little if any value in establishing notability. DES ^(talk) 22:28, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Per Nick, the definitions of reliable and relevant is interpreted by such a wide variety of users that it has a vague meeting. Is a brand new business covered by a local source included? What about a press release by a company in a "reliable source"? What about if the article has other issues like BLP and copyright and is tagged as an A7 instead? Too many questions = Pandora's box. Secret ^account 21:30, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

• The point I was getting at with this edit to the policy is this: If an article on Daft Punk was created for the first time, and the only statement in that article was that Daft Punk was a group of electronic musicians with a reference to a BBC article on them... that should be enough to establish a claim of significance. Up to this point I've seen this be treated as a de facto policy... so why not make this actual policy? Or, likewise we should stop denying speedies based on this. Consistency is key, and prevents Pandora's boxes (or slippery slope fallacies from becoming true). — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 21:39, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

(ec) I agree with Secret. I've seen cases where a major national newspaper (like New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) had a few paragraphs about a restaurant (or other business) in the "local news" section of the paper, and that was the only coverage that could be found beyond the usual self-published press releases and blog posts. Reliable? Yes, given the source. Relevant? Yes. Notable? Definitely not. I don't see how the presence of such a source can possibly disqualify an article from A7.

Not only is it a Pandora's Box, but it's also a slippery slope. We delete lots of articles posted by minions of Wiki-PR, that seem well sourced on the surface, but are actually about non-notable companies looking to improve SEO rankings. Such a rule would open a door for such companies to run roughshod over us. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:40, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Amatulic, If i saw an article about a restaurant or any other business with a cited review from a major national or regional newspaper, I would decline an A7 as a matter of course, on the "where there is smoke there may well be fire" principle. Such a source is along way from proving notability, but it is a sufficient indication that the subject may be notable that I think it should go through AfD, not a speedy. As to the Wiki-PR, stuff, if something seems "well sourced on the surface" but needs digging to establish lack of notability or deceptive sourcing, then it is out of WP:CSD territory, and needs discussion. DES ^(talk) 22:28, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Um, read what I wrote above. A few paragraphs (not a review) about a restaurant in the local-interest section of a major newspaper, with no other coverage to be found anywhere, is not an indication that a subject may be notable. It's essentially local coverage, not sufficient for WP:CORP. Relevant, yes. Independent, maybe. Notable, no. I do often decline such articles if I see significant coverage. I've also deleted articles that have multiple trivial mentions in multiple national publications. Again, relevant and independent, but not notable.Amatulić (talk) 23:11, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I did read what you wrote above. I agree that such a source, if it was the sole or typical source, would fail totally at AfD. But I still maintain that it is enough of an indication that better sources might well exist that it should prevent an A7. DES ^(talk) 23:20, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Wiki-PR stuff can often be deleted on G11 or G5 grounds without resorting to A7, although A7 has been useful (for example, one pattern showed consistent sourcing to a seemingly independent site that existed purely for the purpose of providing "coverage" for the spammer's clients). The fact that they go to great lengths to conceal their activities, requiring due-diligence digging on our part, does not in any way take their contributions "out of WP:CSD territory." ~Amatulić (talk) 23:11, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

And as for the Wiki-PR stuff, if you need to analyze patterns in the sourcing of multiple articles to clearly demonstrate that a site is a fraud adopted for this purpose, then you are way out of any CSD range. DES ^(talk) 23:20, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

As a matter of practice, I decline essentially every A7 that has an independent source. An independent source is a good reason to believe a subject may meet WP:N, and certainly merits an in depth investigation before deletion. WilyD 21:51, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

A7 is supposed to be a lower bar than notability, and notability isn't supposed to be judged through speedy deletion. So anything that might conceivably be evidence of notability is an assertion of significance, including something that an AfD might interpret as evidence that the subject meets the GNG. On the other hand that doesn't mean that every article which cites a reliable source should be exempt from A7, because the source might be clearly disqualified as evidence of notability for some other reason, such as lack of independence. Hut 8.5 22:18, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

What would you say, Hut 8.5, if it were changed to: "The presence of a relevant, reliable, and independent source is considered a credible claim of significance, and disqualifies an article from being deleted under this criterion." Would that be a better version? DES ^(talk) 22:28, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Assessing sources needs to be done at AfD unless self-published. Dlohcierekim 22:32, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's far too close to what AfD should be deciding. Hut 8.5 07:38, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I would support but only if the wording is a bit more careful. I decline A7s merely for sources being present if there are sources in the article that go part of the way toward GNG; ie an RS that significantly covers the subject. However, if there was an RS that only mentioned the subject in passing I might not decline the A7. My judgment about how high the GNG bar is might be a bit off, but I would decline an A7 even if it was well below it as written. Maybe: "The presence of a relevant, independent, and reliable source that significantly covers the subject of the article is considered a credible claim of significance, and disqualifies an article from being deleted under this criterion." I'm not sure of this wording. On the other hand, maybe we don't need to reword, since inclusion of such a source is an indication of significance. IOW, there are many ways to indicate importance and we don't need to enumerate them all, so we don't need this wording change. Are people arguing about this a lot? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 22:48, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, my take on this has been that a "claim of importance or significance" means a claim that a) is plausible and b) gives reason to think that reliable sources on the subject might exist. Under this rule of thumb, the wording of A7 already covers this, because the existence of one reliable source means that (b) is satisfied, both by its own existence and through the suggestion that, where one RS exists, more might exist, as well. We're probably overthinking this. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 22:55, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I said WK was nuanced. Dlohcierekim 22:59, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I generally agree with what Writ Keeper says above, but I think that "for the elimination of doubt" it might be a good idea to have some version of this included to remind peopel of this conclusion. Clearly some people in this discussion think that an article which includes a citation to such a source might still be speedyable under A7. DES ^(talk) 23:24, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

While I may agree with what WK says, but to apply his reasoning it would require a non-zero brainwork, which does not always happen when on a semi-automated patrol of hundreds NewPages. Like someone said, one needs a no-brainer criterion here. Anything which requires brainpower must be brainstormed by a crowd. A presence of (a) reliable (b) independent reference with (c) non-trivial coverage of the subject is a good quick criterion for disqualifying a speedie. In response to Writ Keeper, please notice that this criterion must not say that the source must assert importance. The source itself is an asserion of importance: someone already decided the subject is important enough to publish about it. Of course, Wikipedia has its own rules, but why don't we extend WP:AGF a bit outside of wikipedia :-)? Staszek Lem (talk) 23:35, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, yeah, that's what I meant. The Wikipedia article, not the source, is the thing that needs to assert significance or importance, and the mere existence of a valid, reliable source is implicitly one such assertion, according to my metric above. And while I strongly disagree with the notion that CSDs shouldn't require brainwork (very much the opposite, in fact: for example, I pretty much always run a standard search for sources before I nominate an article for A7, no matter how ridiculous it seems at first), I may be altogether too optimistic about that in practice. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 00:22, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I tend to run such a search before tagging for A7, or before acting on one. But it is clear that many of the editors on NPP do not, and to be fair the volume of new pages probably precludes such if most are to be reviewed/patrolled in a reasonable time frame. I think that many admins do not run such searches either, and the CSD page does not currently mandate, or even suggest, that admins or taggers do so. Given that, the criteria language needs to be as specific, clear, and easy to apply as we can make it. DES ^(talk) 00:38, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Observation: A lot of discussions have come through recently about how to apply CSD rules. My two bits for applying CSD is quite simple: Is it a slam dunk case that the CSD applies? Yes: Apply the CSD No: Nominate for Deletion making the case along the CSD lines but note that you didn't think the exact CSD rule applied. This solves 2 problems, It raises the question of suitability for wikipedia and also helps you get a feel for the community's reaction to certain types of pages. Hasteur (talk) 00:55, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Is there a problem with articles that have reliable, independent sources being deleted under A7? If not then this is a solution in search of a problem and should be rejected whether it would work or not. If this suggestion is adopted in any form though, it needs to be made absolutely clear that while the presence of a reliable source means it doesn't qualify for A7 the inverse is not true - i.e. an article without such a source does not automatically get deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 01:01, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oh, yes; a big problem Wikimedia fusses about for a long time: deletion of a reasonable page 41 seconds after creation pisses off people big time, you know. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:14, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I did a survey of the last hundred entries in the deletion log marked as A7, Karnika Kahen and Daniel Rajkumar definitely had sources that made A7 deletion inapplicable, Stefano Bandecchi probably did, but my ability to assess the independence of sources in Italian is ... not so good, Leathergoods and Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association of Bangladesh had a tangential mention in a good source, probably not enough to stave off an A7, but I'd be curious to see people's opinions. So - it's definitely not a trivial fraction. WilyD 09:35, 17 December 2013 (UTC)#
    • And, of course, I afterwards head over to C:CSD, and the first thing I click on is Mt. Begbie Brewing Company. Even if the admins patrolling C:CSD know not to delete articles sourced to independent source(s), an explicit reminder might well serve newer new page patrollers. WilyD 09:40, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
• I love it when the discuss portion of WP:BRD actually works (partially my reason for making the edit... don't trout me for being pointy please). So, would we like to open an RFC on this or would we like to put the piece back in there with different/more precise wording? It's of no consequence to me, I'd just like to see something get added here on this matter. (@Thryduulf, it's not an issue of deletions, but of mistagged and subsequently declined speedies. I'm trying to alleviate as much wasted time as possible, and as this is kinda my mantra around here I don't bring up problems that aren't actually problems.) — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 01:10, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I have always felt that Coffee's addition was implied. If I find a reliable, independent, secondary source linked from the page, I consider that an "indication of importance". It doesn't have to be enough to evade deletion at AFD. The conversation thus far on this talk page indicates that speedy deletion of such articles may be be sufficiently controversial to be inappropriate. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:03, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• Wow, so there's an A11 criteria now? A lot seems to have changed since my break from two years ago. But A11 seems a little redundant, considering that originally A7 was meant for this exact purpose. Anyway the bigger question that should be asked is how a certain speedy criteria is meant to fit within the five pillars of Wikipedia and its overall purpose in improving the encyclopedia's content, not just consensus on what the language of the current policy should be. For this reason, the notability/verifiability/encyclopedia-worthy nature of articles, its quality, its sources, whether its deletion betters the encyclopedia or adds knowledge to it, and the importance of the creator, whether he's just registered or whether he's credible -- all of this must be taken into account when determining just the criteria by which articles are deleted by normal processes. The "speediness" in the Speedy Criteria comes from the fact that the article is so blatantly obviously unworthy for the encyclopedia it requires no discussion to be deleted. Now my take on the A7 criteria was that it originally was, when CSD came out, for A11's "obviously invented" clause, to satisfy Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day. For example, let's say I wrote an amazing article about my friend in class the other day. It does not pass any of the general criteria for CSD (someone might say it passes G3 broadly construed but I will assert that my friend is real and not a hoax) nor does it pass A1 (because you know who my friend is), A2, A3 (because it's an amazing 3-page essay I wrote), A5, nor A10. But it would not pass A7, because there is no indication my friend did anything notable enough to land him in the papers other than cause me to write about him because he occupies a special place in my heart.
• Why is A7 worded the way it is? Because if there is even one single mention anywhere in the article that my friend had landed in the local papers, that is cause enough to go investigate said paper to see if he meets WP:GNG, WP:RS, WP:N, WP:3LA... etc. Investigations of such a sort should belong in a deletion discussion where we discuss what sources are acceptable, how to find sources, how to apply the relevant policies and endlessly debating the encyclopedia-ness of the article. If it's not blatantly obviously unworthy of the encyclopedia it should not be "shot on sight"; rather it should be given some breathing room and interpretation at AFD. For this reason, I would support expanding the exemption criteria "The presence of a relevant, reliable, and independent source is considered a credible claim of significance, and disqualifies an article from being deleted under this criterion" to include any source, not just relevant, reliable, and independent sources. If there was any doubt as to what the meanings are for "relevant", "reliable" and "independent" (and I'm pretty sure that different editors have different opinions on the meanings of these terms) as well as how they might apply to a particular source (how relevant is it, how reliable is it, how independent from the subject of the article is it), and this doubt is grounds for discussion and consensus-building, then they should go to AFD for discussion, not CSD.
• Finally, as per Writ Keeper above, it must also be asked, does not the mere existence of a single source already prove the article's claim to notability? The fact that it's mentioned anywhere on the Net is sufficient grounds to warrant further investigation of similar sources, even if the article was a company and its only link was the company's website. (For example, it could be argued that because companies must register their domain names from the state, their existence could be legitimized as real/true; whether or not their existence is notable is best left to the deletion discussions) TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 09:41, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• The fact that we are having this discussion now proves how contentious the interpretation of A7 resulting from this proposed change might be. Let's further take examples of the ambiguity between relevance, reliability, and independence. A source could be considered irrelevant but reliable and independent; for example an article about an organization might have a source pointing to a page on a news website discussing North Korea, but a quick Google search and/or a search deeper into the website's database for old files reveals some small blip about the organization, perhaps even mentioned only in passing, but again such grounds for investigation warrant discussion at AFD. A source could be unreliable but relevant and independent, for example Wikipedia, but again that any source about the subject at all exists warrants further investigation. Finally, the example of an nonindependent but relevant and reliable source -- the company website -- might be indicative of a company you might not have heard of but could very well exist because it is a legitimate company. I want to emphasize again the spirit of the original A7 criteria and not the letter of it.
• @Staszek Lem:, that's why I believe that people should be given between 12 and 24 hrs before their articles are "speedied" especially in the cases of A1 or A3, because they are still in the process of writing their articles or laying out their thoughts, and probably only have the bare skeleton that they picked up from MOS laid out.
• @PamD:, but the fact that they are mentioned in the local papers and have "given a paper at a meeting of the departmental undergraduate seminar" is grounds for further investigation to disprove (or confirm) their notability, the investigation of which belong in a deletion discussion and not as a CSD criteria.
• TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 10:31, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

On first impression, adding time constraints to A1 and A3 (for starters) seems reasonable. Would you consider starting a new discussion about those? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:36, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

No problem, we could do an {{rfc}} either here or at VPR on it. I think most Wikipedians have forgotten the spirit of the CSD and only follow the letter of it now, considering how easy it is to use it as shorthand for "non-encyclopedic". I know how easy it is to fall into the overzealous deletion crap. I just realized the existence of barely noticeable footnote 5 which states "Consensus has developed that in most cases articles should not be tagged for deletion under this criterion moments after creation as the creator may be actively working on the content; though there is no set time requirement, a ten-minute delay before tagging under this criterion is suggested as good practice. Please do not mark the page as patrolled prior to that suitable delay passing, so that the wait does not result in the article escaping review at a later time." The fact that this part of the criteria is a footnote of all things has probably made people forget and merely speedy them on sight. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 10:49, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• I 100% support the sentiment of the addition. I can just see this leading to so many time wasting discussions about how a listing in the phone book or having a website isn't wat is obviously meant here, that I don't support the addition. I have no suggestion to fix, apart from people using more common sense on their CSD nominations and deletions. If there is a good(tm) (and that definition is the ambigious part I have problems with here) source, then yeah, we shouldn't CSD it. But I don't think that any attempt to quantify it will succeed, and the more tightly we try to hammer it down, the more inviting it will be to wikilaywering. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:47, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
• A person may have coverage in reliable sources but without this giving any indication of their significance. How about an excellent but ordinary schoolteacher: listed on the school's website, perhaps mentioned in local paper as having taken the children on a trip to see local farm. They might even be in their university website, as having given a paper at a meeting of the departmental undergraduate seminar. All reliable, and indicating their existence, but nothing notable, nothing to prevent an A7 deletion. PamD 09:56, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • A profile by an employer is in no way independent. Independence is key. If the sources used are setting the article on its way to meeting WP:N, they don't need to take it there to make A7 a bad idea, just show that it's pointing in the right direction. WilyD 10:02, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Coupled to that, a company website should not be taken to be reliable. I remember an AfD case where the company site was the only evidence for the existence of what was supposed to be a multi-national corporation (but which turned out to be a fake). Peridon (talk) 12:30, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, a company's website is certainly not independent, but it should generally be seen as reliable if not necessarily particularly neutral. That it may be spoofed is neither here nor there - anything may be spoofed. WilyD 14:14, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• I oppose this addition, which I think if strictly interpreted would send too many hopeless cases to AfD. There could very easily be independent references that verify what the article says but do nothing to establish even the low level of importance or significance necessary to avoid speedy deletion. Examples:

• Claim of importance is as a band. Reports in school newsletter and two local papers all confirm that schoolboy band did indeed play its first gig at school open day.
• Claim of importance is as published author. Google books, articles in local paper and news-sheet of book group all confirm that book exists, but self-published via Lulu.com.

Erik Haugen's modified wording is better, but even that I would consider to be instruction creep: what it says is already in the spirit of A7, and the more you try to specify things precisely, the more you open up possibilities of wikilawyering. JohnCD (talk) 20:29, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

G13

We have a number of AfC drafts where the creating editor, or others, have bypassed AfC and created a main namespace article already. Using Twinkle to apply G13 is, at present, not appropriate because the template expressly refers to articles abandoned for half a dozen months.

Have we discussed AfC drafts which have been short circuited by the creation of real articles and how and whether to nominate them for deletion? Fiddle Faddle 13:37, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, is this part of the discussion directly above? If so please feel free to remove this thread :) Fiddle Faddle 13:39, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

• Timtrent, why do you think it is not appropriate for people to tag the articles for CSD:G13 with Twinkle if that is the method that they wish to use to tag them? Technical 13 (talk) 13:47, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

• Well, the G13 template speaks specifically of 6 months and the user page notification speaks of it as well. This class of article qualifies in all other respects as a G13, but lacks the 6 month abandonment. So, if I tag it as G13 a passing admin is perfectly entitled to look and say "The time limit has not expired, let;s allow work to continue" without ever knowing that the article is already (also) live. At present I have decided top use a custom rationale

A thought is to alter both the template and the user notification to add a phrase such as "Alternatively the draft article has been superseded by an article of name (enter parameter here)." Fiddle Faddle 13:56, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

In some cases, the AfC draft may be useful to augment/develop a mainspace article. It's not wise to engage in their wholesale deletion. WilyD 14:00, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

We are always required to use best judgment, those who nominate and those who inspect the nomination and consider deletion vs retention. This discussion does not run counter to that, nor is it to encourage wholesale deletion. This is for those articles that we run into form time to time and see an issue with. Fiddle Faddle 14:17, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Are you talking about the situation where the article been copy paste moved into main space, and then how to deal with the remnant in AfC space, or something else? If it is the first, it should be fixed as any copy paste move (which involves some sighing, and possibly a little profanity from an administrator, but not speedy deletion). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:44, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

(RE to original question) If a submission has been copy-paste moved into Article space and it appears there's a single development idea, is to Redirect the AfC space portion to the created article. It takes more effort to look at the history pages for both the AfC and mainspace page, but this connects the idea from AfC to mainsapce. You could also request a WP:HISTMERGE to merge the histories together. Hasteur (talk) 15:56, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I suppose that is what I mean, yes, after thought. Proposing all of that lot requires quite some process knowledge, though. Can it be automated? And, if so, might we propose that to Twinkleers? We (you?) would have to give them precise process flow, and it would probably be a "complex deletion" as an entry point to allow for folk like me not to understand! Fiddle Faddle 16:14, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with Hasteur above. A cut&paste move should be fixed normally. If some other editor has created a duplicate not derived from the AfC draft, the draft can be merged if it has any useful content, or declined as a dupe, and the user invited to use {{db-author}}, but G13 should not be applied early. A note in the draft so no one wastes time reviewing it is all that is really needed. There is no pressing need to delete such pages, IMO. DES ^(talk) 16:19, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

In these cases under the condition that everything has been done by the same author, so that attribution is not broken, I personally don't mind doingn this A10 (duplicate) or G6 (housekeeping) either, but I wouldn't mind hearing how others think about that. If this happens a lot and there is consensus for either, we could ajust the criteria. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:18, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

A10 certainly doesn't apply, since all A criteria only apply in article space. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:22, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, maybe I should have made clearer that I don't mind doing it under those criteria even if they don't really fit all that well. Especially A10 is clearly not within the letter of the criterion. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:52, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I think that the criteria should be applied quite strictly, and I would automatically decline any A-criteria I saw applied in AfC space, and warn the tagger. I would restore any AfC pages I noticed being deleted under A-critera without discussion as out-of-process deletions without consensus. DES ^(talk) 18:48, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

While I generally believe CSD criteria should be applied conservatively, sometimes exceptions can be made, and I think this is one of those situations. It's a no-brainer that at least some form of speedy deletion is reasonable here; this shouldn't require much process. With policy being descriptive, not prescriptive, it would be exceedingly hard to find precedent to determine new CSD either. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 19:52, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I disagree, both that there should be exceptions to CSDs as bright-line narrow criteria, and that the described situations require any form of CSD. New CSDs are, in my experience, never ratifications of existing practice, but are always the results of explicit proposals for new practice (see several such above and in the recent archives of this page). CSDs are one case where policy is more prescriptive than descriptive, in my view. DES ^(talk) 21:30, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

If everything is done by the same author, and it looks like a cut and paste move we can just redirect the AFC article to point to the mainspace. Then we treat it more like an accepted article, but should we then tag the talk page for the AFC project? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 19:40, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

You could, and no real harm is done thereby, but a history merge in that case is easy enough. I have done several in such cases in the past and would eb glad to do such in any case you point out. Tagging with the AfC banner is not a policy issue. Persoanlly i wouldn't be inclined to unless a reviewer had approved the article, or the c&p was doen by an experienced editor (in which case why would it be done by c&p?). If the AfC banner means anything at all, it means "an experienced editor passed this as ready for main article space". Or that is what I would think. No one is required to use AfC, after all, nor to wait for a successful review. Any autoconfirmed user can move to mainspace at any time, if s/he judges this to be a good idea. DES ^(talk) 21:30, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

On pure copy-and-paste from AFC into article space: If a histmerge is required to preserve attribution, then histmerge. If all of the non-trivial prior edits were by the same editor who did the copy-and-paste and there's no real risk of the mainspace article being deleted soon, then there's no substantial difference between deleting the AFC page, leaving it alone to be G13'd in 6 months, or doing a histmerge. Basically, whatever uses the least amount of administrative resources is fine. If there is a real risk of the mainspace article being deleted AND the AFC submission could be used as a starting point for a do-over, then avoid deletion unless the mainspace article is deleted at AFD and it's clear that the draft shouldn't be used for a do-over. By the way, I am an active AFC editor and I frequently nominate copy-and-paste moves for histmerge when required for attribution. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:34, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with davidwr. I would also mention that redirects from AfC space to mainspace are IMO generally undesirable. I therefore disagree with the part of Graeme Bartlett's comment above that suggests such redirs. DES ^(talk) 15:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

There is one case where redirects from AFC space to mainspace ARE more desirable than deleting the AFC submission: After a move or histmerge. They are also "okay" after a pure or near-pure copy-and-paste move as mentioned by Graeme Bartlett at 19:40, 10 December 2013 (UTC) above. They are undesirable if the mainspace article was not a derivative of the AFC draft. Why are they desirable in such situations? Because there are probably inbound links that would be broken if the page were simply deleted leaving a red-link (or worse, if the page were deleted and later re-created by a different editor with different content, leaving an incorrect blue-link). They are more desirable than leaving the draft as a non-redirect because 1) someone may continue to edit the draft instead of the mainspace article and 2) when the draft is G13'd, any incoming links will break. If it is turned into a redirect, it likely won't be G13'd but even if it is, a bot will fix up many or all double-redirects. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:33, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

davidwr, after a histmerge (or indeed a move) it says right in the directions to check what-links-here and fix any in-bound links. There normally won't be many. If the move is done with twinkle the bot will offer to do that for you, IIRC. That is not, IMO a good reason for cross-namespace redirects. Those are generally frowned on. And if the move is the the identical name in mainspace, as it most often would be, the proper target should be easy to find if anyone is looking, anyway. When I have done a histmerge out of AfC I always leave no redir behind. When a reviewer clicks accept the script moves the page and does not normally leave a redir, as i understand it. why should a move not done through the script leave one? DES ^(talk) 20:54, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

The AFC Helper Script leaves a redirect behind when a reviewer accepts the move. Since reviewers do not have to be admins, this is a technical necessity. While it could leave a db-g6 behind instead, this hasn't been the practice since the current "WT:Articles for creation/title" system was put in place several years ago (in 2008 or 2009 I think). Even before the AFC Helper Script was written to make the current system easier to use, the same steps were done "by hand" and as far as I recall, redirects after an accept-move were just left behind, not marked for deletion. Any such changed should be discussed on WT:WPAFC first. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:34, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I think it would just create needless work for the helper script to not remove the redirect. Dlohcierekim 07:32, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Please clarify - by "needless work" do you mean needless work by others who come along later? Given that people who use the helper script are typically not admins and they typically do not have "move without leaving a redirect" rights, and therefore cannot "move without leaving a redirect" by using just a script, what method should the script use to not leave the redirect? Should it instruct an admin-bot to remove it? Should it replace the redirect with db-g6? Should it simply refuse to run if the editor does not have "move without leaving a redirect" rights? Bear in mind that everything a script does must not only be tested and debugged, but it must also fail gracefully if something goes wrong while the script is running. In other words, leaving the redirect behind and not coming back and removing it later manually may be the path of least effort. I assume that was the case several years ago when the new (but manual) AFC process was created and that it was still the case a year or two ago when the AFC script was written. I also assume that this is still the case today. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:28, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Thing I noticed

I came here to check on something else actually, but in passing I noticed the criterion "Articles lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article". I'm not arguing that articles with total content "He is a funny man with a red car. He makes people laugh." should not be deleted, but the exact reason given seems flawed to me because surely the title of the article always identifies the subject of the article, doesn't it? If an article has a valid title, say a person's name, yet in the body it has a few paragraphs referring to that person as "He", then rather than deleting the article surely the sensible thing would be to change "He" to the person's name, wouldn't it? 86.176.211.137 (talk) 00:24, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• Is "he" notable? Is "he" the only person in the world with that name? If, and only if, the answer to both of those questions is yes could your proposal be considered and if that was the case, it would be up to the person placing the {{Db-a1}} tag, the responding administrator, or anyone who notices this in passing to change the content of the article to at minimum meet the requirements for inclusion per WP:STUB. Technical 13 (talk) 00:43, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, the fulfilment or otherwise of other requirements is not relevant to my point about this one, but actually I think I have misinterpreted what the text says, so my mistake I think. 86.176.211.137 (talk) 02:03, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Easy way to look at it - if the article tells you enough that you can do more research on it, it has context. Ego White Tray (talk) 02:49, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that would qualify for deletion (under A1, might still hit A7) but I'm wary people might still misinterpret it. For example, if the title was in fact not the name of a person and instead said "The boat in the sky" or something similar obviously there would be lacking context under A1. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 03:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Not really. An article titled Spot the dog, whose content is "Spot is a dog who loves rolling in dead fish" can never be identified. There are thousands of dogs this might be about. WilyD 08:24, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't see how that would qualify under A1. You can clearly identify the dog as having the name Spot, even if you don't know which Spot it is. That would be grounds for either nonnotability under A7 (i.e. what distinguishes him or makes him deserving of mention over a thousand other dogs) or disambiguation if other dogs named Spot are notable enough to have their own article (or even more generally, the article for the generic name Spot for dogs in general vs the proposed article for this specific dog Spot which is notable). TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 10:13, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

If you can't identify which Spot it is, you can't identify the subject of the article. You can never expand the article John Johnson that only says John Johnson is a man., because you can never hope to figure out which John Johnson it is. i.e., in the Spot the Dog example, you've identified the subject as a dog named spot, but not the dog named spot, because there are many. This is how I use A1 (and it comes up not infrequently - usually it'd also be A7, but it covers a much broader range of categories). WilyD 15:54, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• It's certainly a criterion which is much misused. Someone put in on a book article the other day: the stub had a book infobox and an isbn, but didn't have any text apart from an infobox. Clearly identifiable as a book, so failed A1. I've just put A1 myself today on a 12-word stub which said it was a product from x company (non-notable) in y country, no links or sources, no explanation of what the product did except exist (total content: "the tele power strip product by rastin easta soshiant company in IRAN .", in case the previous link is already red, as it should be). I think that's A1. I could possibly have Googled the company and/or the product name, but if the original editor can't be bothered to give us any context I think the stub is best deleted by A1 until someone comes back to re-create it with context and sources. PamD 09:35, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Thinking more, I think that I interpret "lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article" to mean failing to answer "what is this person: a politician, footballer, medieval bishop, ...?", or "what country is this village in?" or, as in the above case "OK it exists but what is it/what does it do?". So not just the name of the person, place, thing, but something which identifies it enough to be even the beginning of an encyclopedia article. I wonder if that makes sense, or agrees with other people's interpretation of A1? PamD 09:50, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
    • I'm kinda hard pressed to call that A1 considering they identified it as the product of a (nonexistent/nonnotable) company; but I guess it might pass because there's nothing to indicate what exactly that product is, as it is the "tele power strip" is undefinable a product. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 10:13, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

In my view, WP:A1 is a ridiculous and widely-misused criterion that should be removed without delay. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 11:13, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

While it certainly makes your opinion on an outcome clear, I don't think many people will take it very seriously without a little more explaining. A couple of examples of articles deleted under A1 that shouldn't have would certainly help demonstrate the widely misused part, and some reasoning why you think it is rediculous would strengthen your case. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:17, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Very well, here's a bit more reasoning: this criterion seems like a way to circumvent the consensus regarding what WP:A7 applies to and nothing more. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 14:29, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

An article which meets A1 is basically useless. If an article doesn't tell the reader what it is about then it doesn't give any meaningful information to the reader and it won't be possible for another editor to improve the article (as they won't be able to track down any more information on the subject). The only way an article which meets A1 could possibly be made acceptable is if the creator comes back and improves it. Context doesn't have anything to do with significance, and it is perfectly possible to have one but not the other. Hut 8.5 15:35, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I've yet to see an example of an article that is "basically useless" without obviously meeting any of the other criteria - nonsense, etc. I'm not arguing that context and significance are the same thing, but that I've yet to see an example of an article that could be deleted via A1 but not A7. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 16:16, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I temporarily restored the last article I deleted under A1 to facilitate discussion and see if we can find common ground, it's at User:Martijn Hoekstra/Golden ratio of Earth. Do you think this is a proper speedy? Would you have prefered it to be handled by PROD or AfD? Or another criterion? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:41, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd say it falls under the nonsense criterion as I simply cannot make heads or tails of that sentence. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 17:19, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Two hypothetical examples of A1 "no context":

• An editor prepares and article about a complex topic and inadvertently includes only a single paragraph, which presumes the knowledge of what was above it, then you run across it a few weeks later and the contributor hasn't edited during that time.
• An editor is writing about an esoteric topic and writes as if his audience is already conversant in the topic. Imagine an article about the Christmas Truce that neglected to mention the year or the the name of the war, but instead focused only on the singing of Christmas songs and the sporting events that happened. Now imagine an equally-important event in a war 2000 years ago between nation-states that most people are unfamiliar with. This would be an example of "no context."

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:43, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Both of your examples have just convinced me even more that A1 should be eliminated immediately. These kinds of pages should absolutely not be speedily deleted - there are other processes available. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 01:07, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

The reason these are speediable is, with all the context missing, no one could possible improve it - Assuming, of course, that the title given these articles is either vague or nonsense. The articles described above could never be improved, since no one would know how to research them, and people who already know the topic wouldn't even recognize it for what it is. The people who did know about these topics would then just create a brand new article instead. So, any article with no context, even if it would clearly be notable if anyone know what it was about, can never be a useful addition to Wikipedia, and it's best to scrap it and write a new article instead. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:04, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

In my view, WP:PROD should be applied to such articles instead. Among other reasons, this would provide some time for other editors to perhaps contact the user in question if more information is indeed necessary. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 12:27, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

If the attempted article is so inadequate that it can't help any reader of the encyclopedia, then I see no reason to keep it in the encyclopedia. It's best deleted, though with nothing to stop anyone coming back and creating an informative stub in future. PamD

Interesting coincidence as I read this before deleting this. I t was tagged for A1, but there was plenty of context for me to delete under A7. But I like to keep A1 anyway, for those articles for which it does fit. Generally, an A1 also meets A7 though. PROD is right out 'cause there's nothing to build from. If an article has name "x" and I get 20,000,000 different "x's" on search, there is not enough context to work with. "Spot is a dog" is not helpful. "Spot is a dog who drug 7 people from a burning building" tells me what to look for. Articles w/ info boxes, I thought were clearly excluded from A1. Info need not be in the text to have enough context to know what you are looking for in a search. Dlohcierekim 12:43, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

To me, the Mohammed Ageel article was A7 but not really A1, and the Golden Ratio one was A1 but not nonsense - it was coherent even though I have very grave doubts about how you would apply Golden Ratio to a sphere... The patent nonsense criterion as I see it doesn't require factual accuracy. It's things like "grtgrbtrfsevsfe nbijtgijvidvij" that are obviously not in any known language, or things like "smith sideways piratical hierarchy filigree sleigh whoops" that wouldn't even be acceptable in a surrealist poetry club. If it's coherent English (or some other language), it's not patent nonsense. Whether it's factual or possible is a content matter. Things that I might consider impossible are quite possible in M.C. Escher's pictures - and in multi-dimensional maths. That's not for CSD. "Smith sideways..." isn't coherent English, and isn't likely to even be a Google Translate from Japanese or Chinese (or even CHimnese as I typed first - getting used to this new laptop with cold fingers...). A first time article that's patent nonsense could be a 'test page'. The third time an author posts that sort of thing, it's usually vandalism. '

That case has absolutely nothing to do with factual accuracy - and I'm not quite sure why you're even bringing that up - and everything to do with the sentence not making any sense whatsoever as far as I can tell... something also known as nonsense. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 16:26, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I see quite a lot of articles that should be A1 that are tagged nonsense. The golden ratio one was coherent English. Probably rubbish, but coherent. This refers back to someone saying that the golden ratio article was nonsense. G1 nonsense is "Pages consisting entirely of incoherent text or gibberish with no meaningful content or history". My "smith sideways..." is incoherent. G1 is not a dictionary definition of nonsense. Peridon (talk) 17:39, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd say that sentence definitely qualifies as "incoherent text". Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 17:43, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Here's a great example of an A1 candidate that I just now deleted. Old guys rule consisted of exactly thirteen characters: It is a shop. Had this been "It is a book", or anything else that's not A7-eligible, we would have no way to delete it except by IAR or by waiting several days for PROD or AFD. Yes, A1 gets misused frequently, but that doesn't mean that we should get rid of it or modify it substantially — it's the only possible way to get rid of certain useless pages. Nyttend (talk) 20:14, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Well... unfortunately now we have A11 for that. I don't like A11 as a criteria all that much either, but in this case A11 can still apply instead of A1. If A11 didn't exist I'd be inclined to support you on this case. Also to make sure, did you wait at least 10 minutes to give the editor a chance to improve before 'speedy'ing it? TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 20:56, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

(literal/POINTy mode on) We don't know that the shop called "Old guys rule" was recently invented. It may be an auto-shop with a 10-year history for all we know. Due to lack of information, we don't know if A11 applies or not. (literal/POINTy mode off) davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:35, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

[ec with David] I deleted it precisely an hour after it was created. No, there was no reason to believe that it had been invented. Small shops have the weirdest names; "Old Guys Rule" could very easily be a shop. Consider a few independent places near where I live: Glory Days Pub, Chocolate Moose, and Caveat Emptor — none are gibberish, and "Old Guys Rule" could just as easily be a business name as any of these three. Nyttend (talk) 21:36, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Yet none of you have answered the following simple question: why could this article not wait for a WP:PROD to run its course instead? For that matter, what about the possibility of another editor coming across the newly-created article during that time and deciding to expand it? Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 21:46, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

If that be the issue, why do we have speedy deletion at all? Can't "Alice and Bob are an up-and-coming garage band in Limon, Colorado. They sold a hundred copies of there first song last year. THEY RULZ!!!!!" wait for a prod just as well, rather than being A7-speedied? The point of CSD is to get rid of pages that clearly don't belong while saving time unnecessarily spent waiting for prods and AFDs, and this is a great time-saving method. Nyttend (talk) 21:50, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

@Davidwr: In the previous mentioned linked above, User:Thryduulf specified the addition of "invented/coined/discovered" to "invented/coined" specifically to deal with these edge cases; not to mention that the formal criteria grew out of widespread acceptance of the formerly essay WP:MADEUP. And MADEUP's points 1 and 2, WP:V and WP:OR respectively, already cover some of this; so even if we don't know it's actually a 10-year old book, it's going to be sent to PROD/AFD either way using the nonnotability and nonverifiability arguments.

@Nyttend: I think your first version appropriately does not belong in any encyclopedia and can be speedied under A7. However, if you just remove the obnoxious "THEY RULZ!!!!!" exclamation points at the end you'll see that "Alice and Bob are an up-and-coming garage band in Limon, Colorado. They sold a hundred copies of there first song last year." is actually a somewhat valid encyclopedic stub entry. There have existed articles about bands out there with nothing more than an external link and a statement saying they're up and coming, and some have even survived AFD's nonnotability/nonverifiability arguments. I'd honestly rather that wait for a PROD; there's nothing libelous or negative about them if the article creator makes claim to their significance. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 23:17, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Clarify A7 on web content and software

Imagine that you find a page that's about software specifically meant to be used on the web, and it's tagged for A7 speedy. Here's the intro, written by User:Devbug:

Extended content
Apache Marmotta is an Open Platform for Linked Data whose goal is to enable organizations to publish and build custom applications based on Linked Data. Apache Marmotta provides the following features: Read-Write Linked Data RDF triple store with transactions, versioning and rule-base reasoning SPARQL and LDPath query languages Transparent Linked Data Caching Integrated security mechanisms

Is A7 applicable because it's web content, or is inapplicable because it's software? Our disagreement doesn't address the assertion of importance issue, so for the moment please imagine that the page clearly doesn't assert importance. I recently deleted Apache Marmotta after someone else tagged it for A7, and User:DGG asked me to undelete it (which I've done) after looking over the deleted content. In my mind, "web content" is anything basically meant for online use, while he gave a careful explanation of why he has a more restrictive view of this part of the criterion.

That being said, what's the intended scope of the criterion? Are we leaning toward DGG's interpretation, or toward mine, or (although I can't imagine how such a thing could exist) toward somewhere else? Please note that this is nowhere near being a dispute or toward animosity; I'm coming here to clear up a grey area, not to get help to make DGG back down. Nyttend (talk) 13:39, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Software that is entirely web based would seem to be web content, and that's the interpretation that I've always used. Although it is a gray area, it would seem to include the tens of thousands of minor database applications, CMSs, server side scripts, .htaccess hacks, and the like that generate web content that are simply so insignificant as to obviously fail WP:N. - MrX 14:04, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

My attitude is, if you use it on their machine it's A7, and if you download it to your machine it isn't. Obviously, some things require a small download to be able to use them, but it's the main application that counts. This means that greataardvark.com is A7, while the Great Aardvark browser isn't. The Tenrecs United multiplayer game is A7, but the tenrec.exe file isn't. Peridon (talk) 17:37, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

My interpretation is different: As I have seen it used, "web content" means creative works published only on the web, or blogs, etc, not programs written for use on the web, which are products like any other computer program. It's probably in the WT:CSD archives somewhere. The wording of CSD A7 specifically exempts computer programs, and the rationale for excluding programs useable on the web is the same as other computer programs and products in general: it usually won't be immediately obvious unless one knows the subject, so no one or two admins should judge. Where the program resides is irrelevant--is [[Office 365] webcontent? The justification for listing "web content" as speedy in the first place is that an overwhelmingly high proportion of web comics and personal blogs and the like are utterly insignificant, so much so that it's fairly safe to judge them.

As an illustration consider this particular program: Read the entire article, not just the intro, the version speedied is [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apache_Marmotta&oldid=587628628 here[ and the current one is at Apache Marmotta. Even the earlier version indicates that it is developed by a notable professional institute, that it has gone through many versions, that it is used by 3 notable users. There are a number of references, tho most are from the company. If speedy applied to software, this would not be a speedy., because any of these factors is an indication of plausible importance. I cannot predict what the result would be at AfD , but I think it has a reasonable chance there. You cannot judge an article from just the lede paragraph. DGG ( talk ) 19:00, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with DGG. Web content is about web content- blogs, web pages, hosts, forums. It is not about programs written for use on the web. Dlohcierekim 21:53, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

The reason that the 'web content' part of the criterion was introduced was because in recent years Wikipedia has seen a number of articles regarding nonnotable subjects such as Facebook derivative sites, personal blogs, web-hosting services and a proliferation of the phenomena often labeled today as internet memes. As such, we should stick to the traditional interpretation of this criterion that addresses the original purpose for its creation in the first place, rather than trying to reinterpret it to include other programs that still might be nonnotable, such as games and MMORPGs that should be judged on their own merits and criteria.

In summary, my interpretation of what can be considered 'web content' for the purposes of A7 includes:

• Nonnotable social networking sites (Facebook derivatives)
• Nonnotable personal blogs (Wordpress etc)
• Nonnotable web-based services (Email providers on the cloud like Yahoo Mail business model derivatives)
• Nonnotable internet memes
• Nonnotable videos on a hosting service (Youtube etc)
• Nonnotable public web sites ('public web site' meaning anyone can access using a URL address, not just intranet employees)
• Nonnotable web comics (Homestuck derivatives etc)

(I apologize for writing 'nonnotable' but what I mean is shorthand for 'does not indicate credible claim of significance', not actual WP:N)

TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 00:03, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree that this can be confusing. For example, if I created a Java code that could be used as the basis for many different online games, each online game would be "web content" but the underlying code would be software. It wouldn't matter to me if the code ran on the end-user's computer or on some server somewhere. Now, if there was only one web site that used the code, then unless the code was notable as code, per se (e.g. the source code was widely used as a teaching tool, or otherwise met WP:GNG) then its only possible claim of notability would be as web content. As a reader/reviewer, my question would be about the "intent" of the article - is the article portraying the subject as "a piece of software" or is it portraying it as "a particular web site" or content delivered by that particular web site? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:19, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I see a problem with "Nonnotable web-based services (Email providers on the cloud like Yahoo Mail business model derivatives)". That seems to be exactly the category of things like office 360, and frankly, I don't see why a web application should be treated differently from any other application. Today, every second website is a webapplication. There is little doubt that there are innumerous webapplications that don't have any chance of ever becoming an article, and speedy deletion seems reasonable for it. Then again, the line is completely arbitrary. Why allow web applications to be speedied, but disallow, say, andoid apps (that have exactly the same problem). If we are to allow speedy deletion of web applications, we should allow those too. If we are going to go down that road, we need to tread carefully. I could image an A7:Software applications for which no credible claim of importance is made working, but there is long standing consensus against that, so if we want that we should first have a lot more discussion and consensus seeking. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:11, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with DGG above about the limits of the "web content" clause of A7. I agree with TeleComNasSprVen about the historical reasons for this clause of A7, it was developed in response ot a glut of basiacally vanity/fan "articles" about minor websites and webcomics, not about web-based software. In my view, software, whether web-based or not, is likely to have its notability indicated by more restricted and technical sources, and thus geneerally be inappropriate for speedy deletion, and also we simply don't get as many unwanted new articles about software. I like TeleComNasSprVen's list, except that like Martijn Hoekstra I think "Nonnotable web-based services" is in a different category and should only be incluced if we further extend A7, which I would tend to oppose. I also think davidwr makes good points above. On the original question, I disagree with MrX that this should fall under A7. DES ^(talk) 15:45, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Point taken. I've struck "Nonnotable web-based services" from the list (I see how most services are also software so that's stretching the CSD criterion a little too far.) TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 21:30, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

A11

In the past few discussions on this page, I see a lot of people taking part that either don't know A11 existed, or oppose it. That leads me to think that it's possible that the consensus previously reached on including the criterion might not have been as general as we previously assumed. Is there still broad consensus to keep it included? Should we have more discussion about it? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:20, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

I had no clue it existed until it suddenly showed up in the deletion dropdown. I don't particularly support it, as it's so vague that discussions/disputes on interpreting it have suddenly become a decent amount of this page already. Unless we're talking about something that's a huge portion of our deletion (A7), we really need to have much firmer criteria. Nyttend (talk) 13:32, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

We recently had quite the discussion over A11, and consensus was to keep it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:35, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

It's not vague to me. If it's a word made-up by Shane and Wayne last Thursday at Deadrat Flats High, it's A11. It's the stuff that is not blatant hoax - stuff that could (AGF) really have been made up by someone and which hasn't a cat's chance in hell of becoming significant, never mind actually being significant. Hoax stuff is designed to deceive. It's vandalism. A11 is possibly real, but no-one except the creator and three mates gives a shit. It says made up by, discovered by, or very similar. Obviously, if it's properly referenced to a proper (non-blog) section of the NYT, then it's not for A11. Some of the people that oppose aren't often found in real CSD work. Some are. Name no names. A11 is to protect the encyclopaedia from looking silly - without accusing possibly innocent posters of being 'vandals'. They can tell us references, and we'll restore - just as we do with A7s that turn out to be highly notable, etc. Peridon (talk) 17:54, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Quite the discussion indeed, but I'm not sure its outcome was that we should keep A11. The close of the RfC state no consensus to merge, and makes no further note of A11 (but we could invite Callanecc to elaborate further on the A11 portion of the discussion). Of those who opposed merging (the outcome of the AfC),I quote three of the commenters: "while I did not support the original A11 proposal [...]" (VanIsaac), "A11 shouldn't exist in the first place" (Technical 13), "If A11 is to remain (which ought to have been the subject of this RfC, but isn't), it should be separate" (DESiegel) - on an RfC that isn't actually about keeping A11. That doesn't look like a solid support for A11 to me. I myself somewhat oppose it, so I'll consider my estimation colored, and am looking for your input, but to me this doesn't look like a clear case of consensus. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 23:11, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, let's be clear that my original objection was not philosophical, but pragmatic - I thought the usage scenario was too rare to warrant the instruction creep of adding a new criterion, not that it was ambiguous or contestable. This is in distinct contrast to your position here, which I do not agree with. Similarly, you seem to have taken DESiegel's and Tech13's quotes out of context (and not provided a link to diffs), implying support that I'm note sure you have earned yet. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 23:46, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps there were not enough announcements in the general forums to provide more input, but it looks like consensus for this rather controversial change to a long-standing policy page only received attention from a supportive minority and is not representative enough a sample for the rest of the wiki editor population. In addition to the posters in this thread and including me, there were at least two other editors surprised by this abrupt change:

Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 51: Where is the demonstration of consensus in favour of WP:CSD#G11 WP:CSD#A11? When was it added? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:03, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Two_possible_new_criteria.3F: This reminds me that there have been many attempts to make an "A" criterion for "things made up in school one day" and they all failed for one reason or another (When the hell did A11 get created??). Someguy1221 (talk) 02:59, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

None of which have indicated support for this new criterion. We might need to reread and rereview the original bases for the criterion, what the 'established consensus' for the previous discussion meant, and how and whether it should apply here and now. Also, I agree with the general sentiment that tightening our current criteria should be a higher priority than introducing more bureaucracy and legalese. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 00:03, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

The discussion which lead to adding A11 to the WP:CSD page was Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 50#Made-up, again. Add CSD#A11 "Obviously made up". This was closed on 23 October 2013 by Beeblebrox as "Consensus seems pretty clearly in favor of the addition of this criterion." The discussion was not structured as a formal RFC, and several participants did not include bolded "support" or "oppose" statements, but several clearly supported the new criterion, and none seemed to clearly oppose it when the n discussion was closed. Shortly after this the change was made on the CSD page by Roscelese and promptly reverted by Technical 13. A brief edit war developed, followed by an RFC drafted by Technical 13 (that is in archive 51). As posed, the RfC question was on merging A7, A9, and A11, not on whether to add A11. But I think that those comments on the RfC (in archive 51) which take a position on the existence of A11, generally supported it. However, if anyone thinks the above referenced discussions do not clearly establish consensus for A11, or that the consensus should be re-examined, a different and better worded RfC on this point could be posted and advertised. I was initially dubious about A11, but now support it, although not too strongly. I should review some logs to see how it is being used in practice. DES ^(talk) 16:17, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Let me state this uncategorically I think A11 is a much needed criterion. It is no more misunderstood than any of the others. It fills a needed niche. It makes it possible to delete rubbish that needs deletion but which could only be speedily deleted via IAR before. I oppose any rollback or removal of this criterion. Dlohcierekim 00:06, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I should mention that in the period after the discussion on creating A11 was closed, and before T13's RfC was started (see above), several editors discussed the matter, and at least 5 seemed to favor it, with only T13 clearly opposing it. T13's arguments (as they were stated then) against it did not hold water, in my view. Other arguments might be different, but were not much expressed to date. DES ^(talk) 00:25, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

G5d article at deletion review

I recently deleted an article 2013 Irkutsk Antonov An-12 crash under G5 that was created by a banned user User:Ryan kirkpatrick who is going for the record for the number of socks. The deletion has been disputed by User:Pigsonthewing on the grounds that it was a notable incident supported by references, Pigsonthewing also made three minor edits for typos which clearly doesnt negate the G5 substantial edits clause. This has now been raised at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2013 December 27#2013 Irkutsk Antonov An-12 crash. In other case of notable articles that have been created and deleted by Ryan kirkpatrick they have been userfied and recreated as new by other editors from the same or new sources. This request at DRV is to restore the original version by the banned editor, just feel that this undermines the G5 principal and would allow banned users to edit as long the subject is notable. Do we need to look at how G5 is used and if this DRV succeeds in overturning the decision is G5 redundant? MilborneOne (talk) 16:57, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Your description of my contribution as "three minor edits for typos" is inaccurate and downplays them. G5 does not require deletion in such cases; and your partisan post here appears to be canvassing. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:02, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Please assume good faith here, this is a question about the operation and use of G5, if you are saying that G5 does not require such articles to be deleted then we are clearly reading different interpretations of the same text, that really needs to be clarified here by discussion and possible amendment of G5, if this is not the place to discuss deletion criteria then I am sorry and I am happy to move this discussion elsewhere. MilborneOne (talk) 17:13, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

The reason we have G5 is that we balance the value of enforcing site bans against the damage of losing (possibly) good encyclopedic content. Once an editor in good-standing makes contributions to such an article, the value of the loss increases and will reach a point where it outweighs the value of enforcing site bans. That is the reason why we have the exception "and which have no substantial edits by others". The moment there exists some debate about whether such edits are "substantial", then a speedy deletion becomes inappropriate. I should not have to remind admins that "These criteria may only be used in such cases when no controversy exists; in the event of a dispute, start a new deletion discussion." The best course of action here was to take the article to AfD. In addition the suggestion from MilborneOne "to raise it at Wikipedia:Deletion review" was equally sub-optimal: the purpose of deletion review is to examine whether the process was carried out correctly; a far better suggestion would have been to make a request at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion, which could have reached a satisfactory outcome without sacrificing so many innocent electrons. --RexxS (talk) 18:37, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Your quotation from WP:Criteria for speedy deletion#Introduction to criteria applies to only the noncontroversial subset that "may be used to delete pages that have survived deletion discussions", not including G5. User:Pigsonthewing just clarified this by inserting a subheading. The list and explanatory sentences were added November 2012 with discussion at WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 47#Deletion after surviving XFD. The header of WP:Requests for undeletion is clear that speedy deletions (except G6 and G13) should be challenged first with the deleting admin and then at DRV. Flatscan (talk) 05:52, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment but I deleted the article in good faith as in my opinion three minor edits were not substantial as I understand the term ("bored" changed to "board", "1,5 tons" changed to "1.5 tons", and two entries of "16:30 MSK" to "16:30 MSK (12:30 UTC)"). I clearly assumed that these edits were not substantial using my understanding of the word, perhaps G5 does need to be tweaked to make this point clear. A bit confused by the criticism of me suggesting "Deletion Review" as I saw it clearly as a process question in that the objection was about notability which is not a criteria for G5. MilborneOne (talk) 19:31, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

I understand you acted in good faith. However you deleted an article under a speedy deletion criterion when there was a dispute already in existence about whether the criterion applied - for example, another editor may find the clarification of MSK to UTC to be a substantial edit (it is often vital to an understanding of an air crash when the flight crosses time zones). It is in exactly these sort of circumstances that speedy deletion should not be pursued; our normal deletion procedures are quite adequate and do not expose the deleting admin to the charge of imposing their preference over another editor in a content disagreement. If you were certain that "the objection was about notability which is not a criteria for G5" then you should have realised that DRV would be a waste of everybody's time and refrained from suggesting it. If we can all agree that the outcome we want is to gain encyclopedic content, should it prove to be notable, then facilitating the undeletion of the article into userspace is the best way of achieving that. As you declined the request for undeletion, then the next port-of-call should be WP:REFUND. The present difference of opinion is really about the extent to which a particular G5-deleted article could be restored (presumably to userspace) - not the rather sterile examination of your actions in the speedy deletion - and WP:REFUND is an appropriate venue for such a discussion. I hope that clarifies the matter for you. --RexxS (talk) 21:08, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. MilborneOne (talk) 21:27, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry RexxS but you're wrong. Nobody mentioned substantial edits before Milborne's speedy deletion of the article. The person protesting the speedy deletion was doing so based on notability and nothing else. I will say this again- If that editor wants this article so badly, why don't he recreate it himself so to stop wasting time at a DRV. I emailed him a copy and made it quite clear he could have gotten a copy of the edit box from Milborne. That was over two days ago....William 19:59, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposed rewrite of Pages that have survived deletion discussions

I made some changes to the body text of Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#Pages that have survived deletion discussions (diff). The previous text implied that only those reasons listed (G8/dependent pages, G9/office, A2/exists elsewhere, A5/transwikied, F8/commons, and newly-discovered G12/copyvio) could be used on pages that survived AFD, and they explicitly encouraged requesting speedy deletion of newly-discovered copyright violations without regard to the possibility of having a good version to go back to.

The reality is that having gone through AFD does not in and of itself exempt a page from any CSD criteria, even if as a practical matter a page that meets certain criteria (e.g. G10/attack, with no clean version to go back to) would never make it to AFD much less survive it, and certain criteria, such as the ones previously listed, are normally not controversial.

So, I made an additional change to take out the "list of criteria" and add some other clarification, then reverted it for discussion (diff, combined diff).

What do you guys think?

1. Keep what I did and take the suggested additional edit (i.e. this version, since reverted) then apply subsequent udpates if it makes sense to do so
2. just keep what I did so far and apply subsequent updates (i.e. keep the current version)
3. revert to the previous version (29 December 2013‎ Pigsonthewing), then apply subsequent udpates if it makes sense to do so

I'm recommending "keep what I did and take the suggested additional edit." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 23:43, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

• Comment The only concern I have with your edit is that certain of the criteria will never apply to any article that was kept after a deletion discussion. A keep means that it was not nonsense, a test page, vandalism, or a re-created deleted page. Being kept in a deletion discussion pretty much disqualifies creation by banned user, author requests (since the discussion is a substantial contribution of other editors), and spam (which would have been identified in the deletion discussion). Attack pages and obvious copyright violations would almost certainly be identified in such a discussion, and a kept page is unlikely to be dependent on another page, and abandoned articles for creation doesn't even apply, so we've essentially eliminated all of the "G" criteria except housekeeping and office actions. Naturally, if a page became speedy-deletable since the discussion, it should be reverted, not deleted. So, I'd say keep the list of criteria that can be used, but otherwise keep your text. Ego White Tray (talk) 00:18, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Looking at the list, A2 (foreign language) and A5 (transwiki) should be removed, since a foreign language article would never survive articles for deletion without translation and transwikis only happen after deletion discussions. Ego White Tray (talk) 00:37, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Ego White Tray, white it is true that some criteria will practically never be used after an AFD, there is no need to create a list that spells out the rest of them. Also, like copyright violations, it may be discovered later than an article was created by and significantly edited only by banned users. In the case of a previously-AFD'd article, if everyone saying "keep" was also banned at the time, then speedy-deletion should be allowed, but the entire history of the article and of the AFD would need to be reviewed first to verify that db-banned applies. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 02:44, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
    • In my opinion, certain criteria should never, under any circumstances, be used to speedy delete an article that survived a deletion discussion. The deletion discussion is proof that the article is not eligible for most of them. Ego White Tray (talk) 02:53, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
• I disapprove of this edit, and I am glad that Davidwr self-reverted. IMO this sort of change to the CSD page should always be discussed first. I think thsat the list should remain, even if it is edited. In particular, an A7 is never valid after an AfD wiht a keep or no-consensus result, nor is a G5. DES ^(talk) 04:38, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
• The list and explanatory sentences were added November 2012 with discussion at WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 47#Deletion after surviving XFD. I've never really liked the exhaustive list, but I think that it is necessary, as I wrote then. Flatscan (talk) 05:52, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I inserted "their most recent" to match the sentence in the lead and reverted Davidwr's body rewrite. I think that much of it is redundant to the checks done for any speedy and that the instructions are woefully incomplete compared to the full G12 text. Flatscan (talk) 05:44, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

• Shouldn't this all be per common sense? I don't know if/why it should be needed to hammer this down. Any sensible and experienced Wikipedian should understand that in general pages that have survived XfD shouldn't be speedied. Those same Wikipedians should also understand there may be exceptions for certain corner cases. These should all be self-evident. Since every speedy deletion is performed by an admin, and I would assume all admins are sensible and experienced Wikipedians, I'd say we're good. Do we have examples where this is getting messed up? If there aren't, this seems like a solution in search of a problem, and those kinds of solutions don't have good historical track records. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:48, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Speedy deleting articles that survived deletion discussions

Based on the above topic, I'd like to review which criteria can be used to speedy delete pages that received "keep" or "no consensus" after deletion discussions:

Those currently listed are bold. Those that I expect are not controversial are in small text.

G1 - Nonsense - Never. Such a page would never have survived a deletion discussion
G2 - Test pages - Never. Same as above
G3 - Vandalism - Never. Same as above
G4 - Re-creation - Never applicable.
G5 - Banned user - Never, as this only applies to pages with no substantial edits by others. A deletion discussion I would always consider substantial
G6 - Housekeeping - This is currently listed as acceptable, but the only possible reason I can think of is redirects deleted to make room for articles
G7 - User request - Never, same as G5
G8 - Dependent on non-existent page - When would this ever apply?
G9 - Office - Acceptable, but should be discourage, with rev delete a better option
G10 - Attack pages - almost never, as such a page should not survive a delete discussion, but it's important to keep this option open if required
G11 - Spam - Never, would never survive deletion discussion
G12 - Copyright violation - rarely, only on the rare occasion that it isn't discovered during deletion discussion
G13 - AFC - not applicable

A2 - Foreign language - Currently listed, but shouldn't be, as such an article would never survive deletion discussion without translation
A5 - Transwiki - Currently listed, but shouldn't be, since transwiki should only happen through deletion processes
A9 - Musical recordings - Not listed, but what if a recording survives a discussion but the band is later deleted - does it qualify?
None of the other A criteria should qualify, since they never would have survived a deletion discussion

None of the redirect criteria should qualify

F1 - Duplicate - Not listed, but maybe it should be an option in case someone later uploads a better version of the same image.
F5 - Orphaned fair use - Not listed, but maybe should be. An image in use during a deletion discussion may become orphaned later
F8 - On commons - agreed.
I don't think any of the others file criteria should qualify

None of the category, redirect, template or portal criteria should apply.

To summarize, the following are worth some discussion: G5, G6, G8, G10, A2, A5, A9, F1, F5

Please comment on the above. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:25, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Don't forget the "substantially changed article" where some realistic CSD criteria was not known at the time of AFD and all edits that aren't deletable under that criteria are deletable under some other criteria. An example would be an undetected, no-good-versions blatant copyvio that survives AFD and which is later totally replaced by a page which, if new, would be CSD-able under any G- or A- criteria such as db-g1. The casual reader might tag it db-g1. The astute administrator would review it and say "nope, can't do db-g1, it's been through AFD so there must be a good version to go back to, but oh wait, that old version looks like it might be a copyvio, let me check Google, yup, the older versions are db-copyvio and the newer versions that aren't copyvio are nonsense. Buh-bye."

So to be clear, you mean that some revisions are copyright violations and the rest are nonsense? Seems like a very unusual case, and I'm frankly not sure how it would be handled if there was no deletion discussion. Ego White Tray (talk) 04:47, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Several comments"

• G6 possibly as part of a complex move.
• G8 for a sub-template kept at TfD if the main template was later deleted validly.
• A9 I think that a previous keep should count as a "claim of importance or significance" so A9 should be off-the-table.
• U1 could happen to a userspace page after an MfD.

Otherwise I agree with the above. DES ^(talk) 05:29, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I disagree about G5. If an article is created and survives a legitimate deletion discussion, and is later discovered to be by a banned user, and still has no substantial contributions by others, I see no reason it shouldn't be deletable. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:25, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I am not so sure about that. If there was a consensus to keep and that it meet all the other standards I don't think that it should be deleted simply because of who wrote the article. Now, on the other hand, if it turned out the previous consensus was due to most of not all the keep comments being made by other sock of the same banned user that would be a different story.--174.93.163.194 (talk) 01:09, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

As mentioned above, Jack, in my view, a deletion discussion qualifies as substantial contribution by others. Such discussions nearly always involve other editors researching the topic to find sources or determine if it's notable. Ego White Tray (talk) 01:41, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

g5 would be clearly inapplicable after a keep vote. If the previous AFD looks corrupted then a new one should be held. Otherwise I am pretty happy with the summary. U1 may not be allowed if someone moved an article to users pace and then asked to delete it. But that case should be carefully considered. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:18, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

G5 is clearly still applicable after an AFD discussion. The content of the article is irrelevant ... the only concern is whether the deletion would cause substantial edits by other editors to be lost. If no other edits have been performed, there is no reason not to delete the article based on the creation by a banned user.—Kww(talk) 20:16, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Does undetected fraud in a AFD invalidate it for the "CSD criteria not valid after AFD discussions"?

Question 1: If an AFD closes as "keep" or "no consensus" and a later analysis shows that enough of the participants were either banned users or sock/meatpuppets to call the outcome into question, AND there were NO remaining editors who supported keeping the article, AND there were enough editors supporting deletion that if the debate had not been compromised it would have closed as delete rather than being re-listed, does it render the AFD "invalid" for the purposes of saying "you can't mark the page as [insert criteria here]?

Question 2: Same question, but there were not enough editors calling for deletion to prevent re-listing had the discussion not been compromised. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:13, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Question 3: Same question, but there was at least one legitimate editor who supported keeping the article.

Answering my own question: For me, situation 1 invalidates the AFD with respect to speedy deletion if it doesn't cause the AFD's results to be changed to "delete" outright, as there really was no support for keeping the article and definitive support for deleting it. Questions 2 and 3 are more murkey. If it was "2-0" not counting illegitimate editors in favor of deletion, which normally means re-listing, I'd probably say yes, treat it as an invalid AFD. If it was 1-0 I would be more hesitant. If it was 3-2 or 2-1 for deletion (even if the "1" was the puppet-master of the sock-farm) I would also be hesitant. If it was really lopsided like 6-1 favoring deletion then I would either treat it as if it as if the AFD hadn't happened, assuming the AFD's results weren't changed to "delete." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:13, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

My answer - don't make an exception since it's moot. It would take either another deletion discussion or a deletion review to fairly make this determination, so there is not reason not to just nominate it for deletion again, so the allegations can be investigated. Also, speedy criteria need to be frequent, and in the spirit of that idea, I don't think fraudulent AfDs are frequent enough to justify making an exception, nor to justify the instruction creep. Ego White Tray (talk) 05:23, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

There may be cases where the socks aren't fairly obvious and noted in the discussion. They are often spotted and either struck out or tagged as SPA. Is there a particular discussion in mind here, or is this a 'what if someone...' scenario? Peridon (talk) 14:03, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Should these two paragraphs be back in?

Except in obviously non-controversial cases such as office actions and pages or files that are known to exist (including all required attribution history) on another WMF project, please check the article history and review any past deletion requests and deletion discussions before removing a page that has survived a deletion discussion.

− −

Consider alternatives such as reverting to an older version, editing out inappropriate content (e.g. copyright violations), etc. possibly in conjunction with revision-deletion as an alternative to deletion of pages that have survived deletion discussions when possible. When in doubt, open a new deletion discussion. Dlohcierekim 14:15, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm okay with this text, I suppose, although the "pages of files known to exist..." part is very awkwardly written. I'm also okay with removing the list of criteria from this section if we notes whether this is acceptable on each individual criteria instead. Ego White Tray (talk) 15:38, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I think these paragraphs should be restored, possibly with improved wording. I think the explicit list of criteria should also be restored as i said above. DES ^(talk) 17:55, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

• User:Davidwr inserted those paragraphs a few days ago, and I reverted within two days. My objections are:
  • There is redundancy with existing checks, both in general and for specific criteria. For example, {{db-redirnonebot}} (G8) already warns admins to check for possible redirect targets. The list members are generally edge cases where the extra checks are just not relevant.
  • I think that the "Consider alternatives" sentence – with explicit instructions of "editing out inappropriate content (e.g. copyright violations)" – is incomplete compared to the full G12 text and that it encourages its readers to attempt ad hoc fixes instead of the established WP:Copyright violations and WP:Copyright problems.

I am open to mentioning previous deletion discussions and survivals. Flatscan (talk) 06:06, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Deprecated templates

Please see Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_December_22#Template:Db-deprecated. Debresser (talk) 09:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

In continuation of that discussion. I found {{Db-deprecated}} as a template to tag templates for speedy deletion as being deprecated. The funny thing is that the template s listed under WP:CSD#G6 as a technical deletion, even though as a template it seems also to fall under WP:CSD#T3, as further witnessed to by the fact that the template postulates a mandatory 7-day waiting period, just like in T3.

My main argument for deletion of {{Db-deprecated}} as mentioned in that discussion is that I think deprecated templates should never be speedied. In view of that fact, some editors have claimed that the discussion is outside the scope of WP:TFD, and so I have come here.

I don't think deprecated templates should ever be speedied. First of all, I have noticed that not always deprecation is discussed at all. And even if it is, the measure of deprecation is not always correctly assessed. Full deprecation means a template is not in use, but also includes that the likeliness of it being used is very low. In addition, I have noticed that it is common practice to keep deprecated templates for years with the deprecated notice, just in case. Even when they are finally fully deprecated, some of them are tagged with Template:Historical template. In view of the above, I think the deletion of a deprecated template should be carefully assessed and is not a matter for speedying. Debresser (talk) 20:21, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Deprecation doesn't mean a template isn't likely to be used. It means a template shouldn't be used. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:09, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Precisely. That is what "full deprecation" means. See the explanations of Template:Deprecated template and Category:Deprecated templates. Debresser (talk) 11:56, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support removing "deprecated templates" from the CSD:T3 criteria. The problem I see here with deprecated templates regardless of why they are deprecated or just how deprecated they are, is that there is no real way to "fully" deprecate a template. There is always going to be some usage, and there is nothing that can be done about it. The reason I say this is because there is no way to change the history of pages using the template. So, those revisions will always and forever use that template. As a note, old revisions of pages always use the newest version of templates. What this means is if a template is deleted, then all of the revisions that used that template are now broken and will not render. This may be okay in some cases, but this is never something that should be decided as a speedy deletion. Technical 13 (talk) 23:55, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Of course there is such a thing as "fully deprecated": If all transclusions of a template have been migrated to the preferred alternative, then the old one is fully deprecated. The real question is whether we should actually be deleting deprecated templates or leaving redirects (soft or hard) behind. I think there is a good argument for redirection, but the parameters of the problem does not fall under any question about deprecated templates staying around - they need to be cleaned up once any switchover has been made. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 04:32, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Then the template isn't deprecated, it is superseded. Replacing with a newer/better version is not deprecation. In those cases of superseding a template with a new version, there should always be a hard redirect or the history versions of all the pages using the template will be broken, which is just a bad road to go down. Technical 13 (talk) 04:46, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Technical 13, superseded is what is called "deprecated" here, agree. What you mean is probably close to the intention of Category:Deprecated templates kept for historical reasons. By the way, I understand from Vanisaac's post that he agrees that deprecated templates shouldn't be speedied. Debresser (talk) 12:00, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned

Since we're on the topic, is it normal to speedy delete templates just for being orphaned? I'm asking the question since I see such cases on Templates for Discussion all the time, so even if you can speedy delete them, no one is doing it. Ego White Tray (talk) 23:01, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

No, templates that are designed to be substituted are technically orphaned, even though they are in use. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:32, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

@This, that and the other I think that was not the question.

@Ego White Tray If a template is not presently in active use, that is not a deletion criteria at all, not speedy and not regular. Debresser (talk) 13:44, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

So orphaned should be deleted from the speedy criteria as well, then. Right now, the way it's written implies that any orphaned template that is not used can be speedy deleted. Ego White Tray (talk) 15:13, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Determining whether a template is used or not may be difficult, due to substitution and a few other rare uses that are not easily identified. I would think they could be speedied if usage can be easily determined to not exist, anymore, or to never have existed, but this is often harder than it looks, so I would prefer having them all go to TfD to minimize error and increase consensus. It is often the case that something nominated as unused is found to actually be used. It may be deleted for other reasons, but not always. —PC-XT+ 17:35, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

CSD and TfD

The way these things are written, if something survived a TfD, they could be deleted the next day through a CSD because they meet the criteria for deprecated or orphaned, per my opinion at the TfD discussion, this is a loophole for an endrun around consensus discussions. -- 65.94.76.3 (talk) 13:02, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I would think that keep votes at TfD explicitly say that it is not deprecated, although it might be orphaned (which is often why it's nominated for deletion in the first place). Ego White Tray (talk) 15:22, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Keep votes at TfD have voted to keep deprecated templates around in the past. -- 65.94.76.3 (talk) 06:11, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Conclusion

After a week I think the general drift of the above is that "deprecated" and "orphaned" are not in themselves speedy criteria. Perhaps an as yet uninvolved editor would be willing to assess if that is true and if it is, make the appropriate edit to the guideline. Debresser (talk) 08:07, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I would draw the line at "deprecated", because that is something which should be determined in a discussion anyway, and preferably that should be a TfD. On the other hand, I have successfully nominated orphaned templates under WP:CSD#T3 (and Wikipedia:Don't abbreviate Wikipedia as Wiki/header under WP:CSD#G6, because technically it was not in the template namespace) and it seems that "orphaned template" is an acceptable speedy deletion criterion. Do we really want to have orphaned templates clutter up TfD? Well, many already do anyway, but do we really want not to have a quicker deletion option? Keφr 09:05, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I think it's better that orphaned templates go to TfD, since it is important to determine why it is orphaned. Ego White Tray (talk) 15:56, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

My opinion as well. Debresser (talk) 19:16, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I've seen CSDs go on "orphaned" templates because someone didn't know that they were substitution templates, so are always "unused", so it's best to go through TfD, to make sure someone isn't assuming that things are not substitution templates. -- 76.65.128.112 (talk) 02:50, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

If they are meant to be substituted, they should be documented as such. We have {{subst only}} for that. Keφr 13:10, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Doesn't mean that they actually are. Several older subst templates didn't have that, as they predate that documentation process; and some of the newer ones didn't have that as the people who create and maintain them don't know about it. Which is why TfD is better than speedy deletion. -- 76.65.128.112 (talk) 01:40, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

One day Template:Citation needed will become orphaned but speedy deletion would ruin an otherwise momentous achievement. Thincat (talk) 12:26, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I restored the recently-removed {{db-deprecated}} template pending the outcome of the TFD. The only reason to remove this longstanding template from being mentioned at WP:Criteria for speedy deletion before that discussion closes is if we decide that the template should no longer be advertised even if the outcome of the TFD is "keep" or "no consensus." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 20:20, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

@Davidwr: Honestly, deprecated templates should not be part of the criteria any longer, so I do not see a good reason why your wholesale reversion should reinstate the wording for the CSD as well as the template link. This seems more like extra wiki-bureaucracy and process than anything. We have followed the instructions at the top of Wikipedia:Templates for discussion exactly as it was written:

"Policy or guideline templates: Templates that are associated with particular Wikipedia policies or guidelines, such as the Csd templates, cannot be listed at Tfd separately. They should be discussed on the talk page of the relevant guideline.

Anything else is just due process and simple formality; we have achieved consensus, here, on this very talkpage of this very policy page, followed the instructions to the letter, and TFD and the closing admin there would do very well to respect the consensus found here. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 22:48, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I didn't want to say this, but I also considered this a super bureaucratic partial revert by davidwr, and pretty unnecessary. Moreover, any admin from here could go to Tfd and close the discussion there as delete. Debresser (talk) 02:05, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

TfD closure not really needed - by removing orphaned and deprecated from the criteria, the template is now a misrepresentation of policy and can be speedy deleted. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:18, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Orphaned revisted

When updating the project page [1], TeleComNasSprVen said "No consensus on orphaned templates however". I noticed 1 editor slightly opposing to remove "Orphaned" as a speedy criteria asking "do we really want not to have a quicker deletion option", while 5 editors are of the opinion that "orphaned" is not (and can not be, because of substitution) a speedy criteria. IMHO this qualifies as a consensus. Debresser (talk) 16:56, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree both with the 5 editors you mention and with your interpretation of that as the consensus opinion. Thryduulf (talk) 18:13, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Five editors out of 123,717 "qualifies as a consensus" to change a major policy? Keφr 18:19, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

If we required a majority of active editors before changing things then nothing would ever get done. Fortunately we only require consensus of those who express an opinion. Thryduulf (talk) 18:37, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I never really focused on the template criteria, but it seems obvious to me, in agreement with the discussion, that orphaned as part of the criterion is a bad idea and you can chalk me up as a sixth. As noted, any normally substituted template may appear "orphaned", and determining whether it actually is may be difficult (though a z number assignment makes it much easier), which immediately makes that part of T3 criterion hard to be seen as meeting our objective and uncontestable goals. Anyway, I'm not so sure that even if we determine a template is actually orphaned that's a good speedy basis without discussion. Take, for example, a template I set up for when the VisualEditor was the default. That template is (likely) truly orphaned now and thus a speedy delete candidate solely on that basis. But if there was discussion of it, I'd argue we may very well see the VisualEditor back and it will be highly useful then. I'm sure there are many other sui generis circumstances where speedy deletion for being orphaned, alone, is a bad outcome on the merits. "[I]t must be the case that almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 19:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The editor above is right. In addition, if the ratio is now 7:1, it is likely to stay in favor. Also, the arguments forwarded are strong arguments, which is important since WP:VOTE means consensus is not just a vote. And last but not least, it has already been indicated above, that many templates have been nominated through WP:TFD, even though technically they could have been speedied, so either this "major policy" is not well-known, or editors have always seen it as flawed. Debresser (talk) 20:13, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The deletion criteria should be unused, not orphaned. The templates that are ideally orphaned include subst-only, preloaded, and many maintenance templates, as well as those intended only for informative redirection or placeholding, (such as deprecated templates,) temporary sandboxing, or configuration. The range is from very useful to useless. Only once any usefulness is past should it be deleted, unless, perhaps, it can be expected to become useful again in the near future. Discussion is often required to determine usefulness. —PC-XT+ 20:06, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Unused should not be a reason for speedy delete - if it is intended to be substituted, it will be difficult to determine if it even is unused, and if not, we still need to determine why it's unused before deleting it. Ego White Tray (talk) 00:52, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

My philosophy is that if anything needs 'further investigation' (i.e. it's not completely obvious and if the administrator passing by must try to figure out by checking Special:WhatLinksHere, whether the template is substed or not, and this goes with almost any CSD criteria not just templates) then it doesn't qualify for point-blank fire-and-forget CSD criteria. So if it's not obvious that an orphaned template is not in use as a substed template, it should go for discussion and investigation, with probably a delete outcome. However, there's also G6 as a fallback criteria for purportedly non-controversial cleanups, and orphaned and obviously unused templates are rare enough that G6 can be used sparingly, so you can try using that instead. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 18:45, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Housekeeping deletions should NEVER be used if there is a consensus against speedy-deleting - So, no, G6 can not be used for "obviously" unused templates. Also, as mentioned above, it's never obvious. Ego White Tray (talk) 02:54, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Well yes, any sort of deletion should not be used if there's consensus against it, that's a moot point. But would you still object to using G6 on say, an unused template that duplicated a mainspace article, or an unused documentation page that is technically in template space which an admin forgot to delete after he deleted the main template page? Or do you think that those still warrant more discussion? TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 03:03, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

A template duplicating an article doesn't meet any speedy delete criteria, but this seems like such a rare case, that it wouldn't be a burden to TfD (unless you've actually seen this happen). As far as the documentation page example, that would easily go under G8, since it would be dependent on the non-existent template page, and no, it doesn't need discussion. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:14, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, the template duplicating an article could be treated as an article (since that's what it really is) and be deleted under A10 if applicable. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:15, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

G8? I didn't know we had that criteria, I thought most subpage deletions were considered "technical deletions" under G6. A10 only applies to article, but I guess if we really wanted to we could apply liberal interpretations of it as well as the other criteria like G2. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 23:35, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. The deletion shouldn't be speedy. Also, some templates appear to be something they are not, due to editors who don't realize all the uses or their particulars. It can be a mess, and not always easily handled. —PC-XT+ 20:29, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

By the way, the edit was already made. [2] Debresser (talk) 21:47, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

broken redirect

Are broken redirects able to be speedy deleted?ZSpeed (talk) 14:14, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Redirects that point to deleted and/or missing pages can be speedily deleted under criterion G8. WilyD 14:21, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Can be does not mean should be. Might it not be more appropriate to fix the redirect to go to the new location? Technical 13 (talk) 17:19, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

@Technical13 See the reply of the editor above: Redirects that point to deleted and/or missing pages. If a page is missing/deleted, then there is nothing to fix. Debresser (talk) 23:51, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Debresser, I understand that, but that was not the OP's question, so I felt I should clarify it especially since their <250 edits suggested to me that further explanation was warranted. Happy editing! Technical 13 (talk) 00:17, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I brought this up a while ago but I remember being shot down, but I think we should list the general criteria that applies to individual sections. For redirects, for example, we could not to use G8 for broken redirects, G6 for redirects obviously created in error, G3 for redirect vandalism. I think each namespace section should have something like this. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:06, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

So pretty much a broken redirect can be deleted, but first you should see if the redirect can be fixed. ZSpeed (talk) 13:15, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes:

• If a redirect points to a deleted or never existing target, and there is nowhere else to point it to, then it can be deleted under G8.
• If a redirect is broken because it's a double redirect then it must be fixed not deleted.
• If it is broken because it points to another project or a special page, it should be converted to a WP:Soft redirect.
• If someone attempts to create a redirect but doesn't do so correctly then, if the target is plausible it should be fixed. If the target isn't plausible but a different one is, fix it and point it to there. If the target isn't plausible and there isn't a different one that is then it can be deleted under R3.
• If a redirect is created by mistake, including as a result of a mistake when moving a page, then it can be deleted under G6 (or U1/G7 if so requested).
• If a redirect was created as vandalism then it can be deleted under G3 (but note that just because a redirect is offensive it isn't always vandalism - see WP:RNEUTRAL).
• If you can't work out whether a page was intended to be a redirect or not then it is likely that at least one of A1, A3 or G1 will apply.

If you aren't sure, nominate it at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion (WP:RFD), it will be speedy deleted from there if appropriate. Thryduulf (talk) 14:03, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

insult in redirection

IMHO, insults or defamation in redirection like Somebody name ->Adolf Hitler should be deleted immediately. I'm also surprised that it starts numbering as R2, why is there no R1 rule ?Lpele (talk) 15:10, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

They can be speedied - use G10 or R3, or both together. There probably was an R1 once - possibly covered redirects in general and got split. Numbers don't get reused, to avoid confusion. Peridon (talk) 15:42, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

R1 was about redirects to deleted pages and was merged into G8 a few years ago. Thryduulf (talk) 12:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

G3 seems reasonable too. Really, there is a plethoria of possible speedy deletion criteria this could be deleted under. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:09, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Old criteria

A4, A6, A8 and G9 are missing too. Someone will tell us what they were. Peridon (talk) 15:45, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

The project page already does, you just need to read it. It's in the section "Deprecated criteria". Those missing ones have mostly been merged into others, while the only one that was ever entirely deleted was T1, divisive inflammatory templates, decreed by Jimbo (talk · contribs) by fiat, and a great example of why he should be treated like any other editor, since he never could've gottten consensus for it. Ego White Tray (talk) 17:15, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Is there any reason we can't have entries for the repealed criteria at their natural places, e.g. R1. Repealed; see below, in order to make it easy for anyone to find? I added it some time back, since it's a good deal simpler than finding the "Not all criteria are used; some have been repealed" note that's stuck in a few different spots; however, someone removed it for a reason that I didn't understand and can't now remember. Nyttend (talk) 20:02, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I actually made that change, figuring it was best not to have the unused numbers with the real criteria. The "some have been repealed" text is a link to the section listing the old criteria - it is placed on the categories that have missing numbers. Ego White Tray (talk) 20:35, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

This section demonstrates why that's not a good idea. If the lines for the repealed criteria have nothing except "Repealed; see below" or something like it, you're not going to go around tagging pages under them in good faith; any such tags are either vandalism or typos that you could make under the current setup. As we have it right now, it's very easy to overlook the "some have been repealed" text because it's so small, and when you discover that there's a gap between A5 and A7, you're not likely to think of scrolling up to the top: this isn't the kind of page that people generally read from top to bottom or in any other specific order. Nyttend (talk) 21:00, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but the repealed criteria are of such low importance, that if not for the missing numbers, I'd say not put them in that section at all. If you prefer the inline format, I could live with it, but without a section header and not boldface. Ego White Tray (talk) 00:58, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

How about a simple

A4: deprecated

VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 01:27, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

You could - but why do you really need to? In my view, the small note about skipping numbers is all you need. Ego White Tray (talk) 15:26, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I quite like that too. Ego, are you adamant against including it? I'm not seeing the point to not have the extra clarification (yet). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 19:15, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm opposed to anything that makes the list more complicated while providing no benefit. There are already people who think the list is far too long for them to bother reading the detail, this would make it worse. Thryduulf (talk) 19:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Interpretation of G5. Creations by banned or blocked users

WP:CSD#G5 states "pages created by ... blocked users in violation of their ... block". Does the term "block" only apply to English Wikipedia, or is it of broader scope? Consider a user who has been blocked 1 month at Commons for "uploading unfree files after warnings". If these images have been deleted from Commons, and the offender then uploads exactly the same images to English Wikipedia (licensed {{self|GFDL|cc-by-sa-3.0|migration=redundant}} as they had been at Commons), does G5 apply to these images? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:28, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• In general, no. Being blocked on one project is a local matter (although there are global blocks), so continuing to be involved in other projects is not a violation of the ban/block. The example is a little hard to parse - in general, Wikipedia can host unfree images, under certain conditions, so even if they get deleted off Commons, they might not be deleted here. However, if they're being uploaded with bogus licences (your example is a little unclear) CSD#F9 applies, so G5 is kinda irrelevant anyhow. WilyD 11:41, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• No, they might happen to qualify under F9, but it's outside the scope of the G5 criteria, and CSD are supposed to be applied only when the criterion has been strictly met. Probably the best way to handle something like this is at ANI, where admins and active editors can examine the issue, and extend the block/ban to enwiki if necessary, but the images could very well be fair use on enwiki, while being copyright infringements on commons. This is exactly the sort of thing that needs discussion, and CSD just don't leave the kind of paper trail of consensus that you would want for something like this. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 11:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• No, non-global bans and blocks are local. But... edits made by suspected sockpuppets of a blocked user incorporating such non-English-Wikipedia creations probably should e investigated and, under some circumstances, reverted with no assumption of good faith. For example, if a blocked editor uploaded a file to the Commons and an IP address put that file in an English article in a way that was consistent with the editor's past behavior, I would be more inclined to toss good faith aside and summarily revert the change in the article and possibly open an SPI than I would if the edit looked like it was coincidental. However, I would do so at my own risk - if I was wrong too often, I would rightly be called on the carpet for being disruptive. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 22:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

It's not a sock (suspected or otherwise) - the user's editing style is, erm, distinctive; and I've never come across anything quite like that before.

It's a noob with a very poor understanding of copyright, the importance of reliable sourcing, and a number of other matters. Every single one of his ~60 uploads at Commons was deleted as a copyright violation; after deletion, he re-uploaded some of them under different file names, and so basically ignored all the warnings. He only stopped after a block was imposed - at which point he started to upload the same images to Wikipedia instead. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:13, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

If they violated copyright on Commons, they likely still will here, unless they happen to qualify for our very limited Fair Use policy. If so, they can be deleted here and if her persisnts he can be blocked here. The info from the commons deltions can surely be used to speed up the process here. DES ^(talk) 23:19, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• Absolutely not. Commons blocks are not binding on our Wikipedia, so an edit (or an upload) done by a user locally blocked on the Commons isn't in violation of a block. If a user has a global block, though, it should apply. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:48, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Soft-redirects

Is a {{soft redirect}} a redirect or an article? (or are they a clever way to be immune from CSD?)

There have been a bunch of discussions about this over the years, including one decision at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_42#SP:EF, SP:AF, and R2 which resulted in user:MSGJ changing R2 using this wording to exclude soft redirects. That wording no longer appears in the current R2. I havent looked for when this was removed.

Instead we now have a bit of text in the redirects section that says: "For any redirects, including soft redirects, that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion."

Some obvious examples

• 'Foo123' as a soft redirect to 'User:Foo123' - most would consider that R2.
• 'Foo123' as a soft redirect to 'Blah' - most would consider that R3

However we have soft redirects that could reasonably be considered as R2. There are ~50 soft redirects in mainspace.

English Wikipedia (to mainspace)

• Frankenstorm (see talk)
• Osteopathic medicine (until yesterday; see history)
• Great Hall (Harvard University)
• Alumni Hall (Harvard University)

English Wikipedia (to R2 excluded namespaces)

• Navpop
• Hat note
• List of court cases that cite Wikipedia
• List of court cases citing Wikipedia
• List of court cases citing to Wikipedia
• Your first article

English Wikipedia (to R2 eligible namespaces)

• Spezial:Beobachtungsliste
• SP:AF
• SP:EF
• Mysandbox

English Wikisource - all now using {{wikisource redirect}}

• The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future - created 2008
• Executive Order 13072 - created 2009
• Executive Order 13026 - created 2012

English Wikisource (transwikis) - all now using {{wikisource redirect}}

• Will of Chiang Kai-shek
• Korean Air Lines Flight 007 transcripts
• Wakefield Regional Council/Green Paper
• Phil the Fluther's Ball
• As some day it may happen
• The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter
• Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy
• Allende's last radio message

English Wikiquote - all now using {{wikiquote redirect}}

• Indonesian proverbs (created as redirect)

English Wikiquote (transwikis) - all now using {{wikiquote redirect}}

• List of Polish proverbs
• List of German proverbs
• German proverbs (redirect left from move to List of German proverbs before transwiki)
• French proverbs (redirect left from move to List of French proverbs before transwiki)
• Portuguese proverbs
• Chinese proverb (was redirect to List_of_Chinese_proverbs)
• Chinese proverbs (created as redirect)
• Hungarian proverbs
• Icelandic proverbs (wierd changelog)

English Wiktionary - all now using {{wiktionary redirect}}

• cause celèbre & cause celebre (now redirects to Cause célèbre?)
• Chinese radical index (created as redirect)
• Avunculus (created as redirect in Dec 2012)

Wikispecies

• Xylocopa appendiculata (created 2010)
• Brachydiplax chalybea (created Nov 2012)
• Neurothemis intermedia (created Dec 2012)

Wikimedia Commons

• Flags of active autonomist and secessionist movements
• List of cultural flags
• United States presidential election maps

English Wikibooks

• Geordie dialect words (transwiki) (see wikt:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2014/January#Geordie dialect words)

Non-content pages on Content wikis

• COM:FR (see User talk:Optimist on the run#COM:FR)

Non-content wikis

• Wikipedia Ambassador & Wikipedia Ambassador Program (outreach)
• Don't be a dick
• The Wikipedia Quality Survey

Personally I think we should stipulate that soft redirects may not be created to any other wikis, except as an outcome of an deletion of a local content page (i.e. that includes all existing soft redirects created from transwiki decisions). If we agree on a change the some soft redirects fail, I also propose that deletion of any existing soft redirects must not be speedy deleted - they must go through RfD. Many of these soft redirects can be changed to local mainspace redirects without much effort. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 17:43, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Soft redirects have normally been treated as redirects, and are eligible for the R criteria (obviously excluding where deletion would be controversial). Soft redirects to other projects are not covered by R2, and a proposal to make the eligible for CSD was strongly rejected in the past iirc. They are eligible to be nominated at RfD.

I would very strongly oppose your proposed criteria that soft redirects should be presumed deleteable unless content has been deleted here. There are good reasons why the majority of them exist, and not only because content here was transwikied. While that will not apply to all of them, a nomination for deletion should explain why the nominated soft redirect is harmful, not why soft redirects in general may or may not be harmful. Remember that RfD is Redirects for Discussion (not Deletion) and a proposal to retarget is just as valid as a proposal to delete. Thryduulf (talk) 09:51, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Reading just "For any redirects, including soft redirects, that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion." by itself, I wouldn't necessarily interpret it to mean that soft redirects cannot be speedily deleted. Instead, it could also be taken to mean "use RfD for redirects that don't qualify for speedy deletion; treat soft redirects the same." Shall it be rephrased to be less ambiguous?

Of the examples given, is it proposed that R2 should apply to just the four under "English Wikipedia (to R2 eligible namespaces)", to all soft redirects, or something else? —rybec 14:55, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

TDD Java Tutorial clear-cut "how-to" guide-- WP:NOT for a couple of reasons

Do we need a WP:CSD category to cover pages like this? It makes my delete finger itch. Dlohcierekim 00:07, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• Unless there are so many such pages that they are overwhelming PROD/AfD, no. Thryduulf (talk) 00:21, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  • With the recent edit, could that qualify for A10 now? Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:26, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Given how many AfD debates these days get almost zero discussion and get relisted a couple of times, it does seem to me that AfD is overwhelmed. Not because there are so many discussions, but because there are so few participants. —Kusma (t·c) 10:47, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
• I don't know how much this is still done these days, but such pages might qualify for transwiki'ing. Of course, for a new page, it is easier to talk to the author and ask them to just post the content on a relevant wiki instead of here. —Kusma (t·c) 10:45, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

A1 - No Context

Should A1 explicitly note that articles in foreign languages must be run through Google translate or a similar service to see if they have context before deleting them? I warned Jni about an out-of-process deletion at Yosorejo, and s/he replied that "CSD A1 criteria this was originally tagged with applies as I failed to recognize the context (no wonder given it was all just gibberish)". — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:00, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Crisco, the section "Non-criteria" point 16, says:

"An article written in a foreign language or script. An article should not be speedily deleted just because it is not written in English. Instead it should be tagged with {{Not English}} and listed at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. It may be reconsidered after translation whether the article merits deletion, retention or improvement by means of a suitable tag."

This is quite specific that merely being in a language other than English does not qualify an article for deletion under A1 or A3 (provided context is clear to an editor fluent in the language). If you have described the situation correctly, Jni was in error. DES ^(talk) 01:50, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• I am quite certain that s/he was in error, and that is not what I asked. The question was if we needed to be explicit with A1 as we are with G1 (i.e. have the statement that the language should not be a factor in the criteria itself). That quote supports my point that foreign-language articles should not be summarily deleted, but does not answer the question. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:02, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• Sorry, i misread the question. Yes I think that such an explicit statement could do no harm, would not change the intended effect of the criterion, but would help clarify that pages in mainspace not written in English should not be speedy deleted Under A1 or A3 if they have content and context when translated. DES ^(talk) 02:08, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Is this a big enough issue to warrant documenting here or can we handle the occasional mistake on a case-by-case basis? Our documentation will never cover every possibility. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 02:31, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

It is very hard to know. Pages that are speedy deleted with a log entry of A1 or A3 are seldom reviewed by anyone after the deleting admin unless the original editor complains, and even that doesn't always cause an admin to look at the deleted text. It was big enough to list in "non-criteria". How big would it need to be to add to the text of A1 and A3? A1 in particular already lists several things that should not be deleted under it. DES ^(talk) 02:42, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• Pretty much per DESiegel. The only reason I reviewed Yosorejo is because I deleted a copyvio version uploaded after the previous deletion (and even then only because someone tagged the article as needing translation from Indonesian, a language that I'm rather fluent in, and that appeared on my watchlist). I almost never review A1/A3 deletions. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:50, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I am not against the addition per se, but I question whether this is a one-off (we shouldn't add anything to policy or guideline that addresses something that is exceedingly rare). If this was asked in the abstract I would have said that I am having trouble imagining any admin acting on such a request because it is improper on its face. Here, we have one admin who actually did so act, but I think it's a mistake (and very clearly so) that is specific to this one admin and is highly unlikely to be made by many or even any others.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:41, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• One would hope... — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:46, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

This is all just useless rule-wonking. If someone is stupid enough to add one sentence of Indonesian or whatever to English wikipedia, they should not be surprised if their "contribution" gets submitted to some deletion process instead of being translated. jni (talk) 10:08, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• Perhaps, but as an admin doing CSD patrolling it is your obligation to follow policy... as has been pointed out to you before. The original article should never have been deleted. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:13, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I second Crisco's comments. If you think pages written in a language other than English should be subject to speedy deletion (either in all cases or subject to other considerations such as length), then you need to gain consensus for this first. Speedy deletions based on IAR or where policy is not clear are one of the most harmful things an admin can do. Speedy deletions that are directly contrary to policy (as this was) are grounds for desysopping - after a single occurrence in extreme cases (which this wasn't) - because the admin cannot be trusted to uphold policy. Thryduulf (talk) 12:36, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
    • Just a note that a second article, Petra Gregov, has come to my attention. Same rationale, different language (Croatian). This one should have been deleted anyways, as what seems to be an attack page, but I doubt that was checked... — Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:40, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
      • Crisco and Thryfuuld, since it's clear that this is a pattern, how do we go about removing Jni's admin, or at least speedy delete, right? What forums addresses this, since it seems that Jni shouldn't be permitted to do speedy deletes anymore. Ego White Tray (talk) 15:20, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
        • The options as I understand them are:
          1. Getting Jni to voluntarily not speedy delete anything until the community has trust in him again. I'd say at least six months of their tagging articles for others to speedy delete not evidencing any problems with their judgement would be a minimum to regaining that trust.
          2. If that is not possible, then a discussion at WP:AN/I proposing a community restriction of this sort is the way to go.
          3. If there are concerns about Jni's admin actions other than speedy deletions (I have not looked) then WP:AN/I needs to be the first step.

          If there is consensus that Jni does not hold the trust of the community to be an administrator then they have the opportunity of resigning the bit under a cloud, or being taken to the arbitration committee. If restrictions are imposed by consensus and these are not upheld, then an arbitration committee hearing will be required.

          Significant discussion of this is not appropriate here though but should happen at WP:AN/I, but should not happen until Jni has either responded or made clear that they have chosen not to respond. If anyone starts such a discussion please ping me. Thryduulf (talk) 15:42, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

          • This has been brought up at User talk:Jni Ego White Tray (talk) 15:56, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

          You guys are really crazy :-) To what I should respond exactly? To your ludicrous idea of desysopping me over some technicalities regarding speedy deletion? I made a mistake with Petra Gregov, namely selected a wrong CSD reason from the menu. Should have selected CSD A7 (easy to see despite foreign language) or G10 (did not spot that possibility as my Kroatian skills were rusty). What is the point here, other than harassing me? Petra Grekov clearly satisfied multiple speedy deletion criteria. So what if the deletion reason was wrong in the log, but article was otherwise speediable? jni (talk) 16:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

          • Jni, Reviewing your deletion log, I have so far found four very recent A1 speedy deletions that were not valid. Three of them should not, in my view, have been speedy deleted under any criterion. One might have been valid under a different criterion. A1 is not a catchall. It is to be used when the page, including its title and its links, truly do not give enough information for someone to find possible sources to expand the article. If 2 minutes of thought and a Google search, or following links, or a Google translate run, or similar effort, would let an editor know what the page is about and start to find sources and further info n an attempt (possibly unsuccessful) to expand the article, the it isn't a valid A1. I would like you to indicate understanding and acceptance of this, and to agree to be more careful with A1 in particular, and with CSDs in general, in future. DES ^(talk) 17:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
          • @Jni: when administrators and other users in good standing express concerns about your admin actions, the correct response is to take on board their feedback and modify your behaviour so that aligns with community expectations. Dismissing those people as "crazy" is not a way to convince people that you are trustworthy. An administrator is not expected to get everything right, but they are expected to acknowledge and learn from mistakes. Thryduulf (talk) 20:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Considering the available of Translation services, all one need do is run the text in question and see what emerges. Even a mangled translation can give some sense of notability. No matter what the language, "my boyfreind is cool," is deleteable. Nouns generally come through clearly and offer clues. When in doubt, don't delete should deal with the indeterminate. We should never be in a hurry. Dlohcierekim 13:49, 22 January 2014 (UTC)::But back to the original question, this is something I always do. If people can't tell gibberish from not English, then yes, make it obligatory. Dlohcierekim 13:52, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

If people can't tell gibberish from not English, then yes, make it obligatory Please tell us, in general case, how you are going to make this happen. Hint: it is impossible to differentiate between bad machine translation versus original being gibberish. Speedy deletion should be speedy, it cannot contain elements that require lots of investigative work. (When in doubt, don't delete - moral guideline of course applies universally.) jni (talk) 16:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

CSD page clearly says, as a non-reason, that not being in English is not a reason to delete. So there has to be some sort of check. If you, personally, can't tell foreign languages from gibberish, and are not willing to do the check, don't do deletes on that criterion. CSD deletes are speedy, not thoughtless (or workless). SamBC(talk) 19:00, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, my. Speedy does not mean "quickly" or "in haste". It means "uncontroversial". It means so lacking in encyclopedic content as to be unquestionably unsalvageable. The NPP'ers do a wonderful job. They are not perfect, error free, or always possessed of the solidity of understanding of WP:CSD that is expected of admins. We MUST check there work. I do not count on others performing a WP:BEFORE. I do it myself, because I am responsible for my errors and it is my error if I delete an article that is suitable for inclusion. Part of before is to run "gibberish" through the translator to see what pops out. It is better to not delete than to delete wrongly. And if Google translate cannot give us a perfect translation, it can tell us how to tag the article in question so that someone conversant in that language can translate. That is, once again, if there is not enough sense in the translation to recognize insignificance/significance/notability. (I agree that "not English" should be grounds for CSD. That's not the policy, and I acknowledge that mine is a minority position. And sometimes we find the subject really is encyclopedic.) Dlohcierekim 23:25, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

@Sambc: Indeed. Dlohcierekim 23:26, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

But to write more clearly and succinctly, if machine translation is too unclear to determine insignificance/significance/unnotable/notable, then the thing does not meet A7 and one cannot determine whether or not it meets the others. It's in a language that the reviewer cannot read; it may be someone else can read it. Best to leave be. Dlohcierekim 23:39, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

"Speedy does not mean "quickly" or "in haste". It means "uncontroversial"." That is absolutely correct. Every deletion must have consensus before being performed, speedy deletion is for the cases where there is standing consensus that pages unquestionably meet the letter and spirit of the criteria and discussion is not needed. This means that they may (note not must) be deleted iff' another option (merging, redirecting, etc) is not better. If for any reason you are not able to determine whether a page meets the criteria then by definition it does not. Jni, your fundamental misunderstanding of what speedy deletion means is deeply troubling. Thryduulf (talk) 09:18, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Your accusation of me having a "fundamental misunderstanding" is total BS. I'm not wasting any more of my time for even answering strangeness like that. Please cite the policy, that makes it mandatory for deleting admins to create useless redirects for every typo when someone makes some newbie editing experiments. To my knowledge, participation to content creation here in Wikipedia is voluntary, and salvaging the very bad short articles from CAT:CSD is a commendable activity, but not something that can be mandated for everyone doing routine cleanup in this area of Wikipedia. Do you really want to create a huge backlog here just because some people want to save everything, no matter how hard and time-consuming it is to try to restore articles where the real content is, say, some single word in foreign language and then start second-guessing what the heck the original author - who often times does not bother to do any constructive activities but might do things like removing the tagging for no reason or blank the page or whatever - wanted to express with that single word that may or may not have been translated correctly? If the topic is notable, anyone can just start editing an article for it, no need to fuss over speedy deletion of random words or sentence fragments or whatever was there in the very first revisions, other than harassing the CAT:CSD cleaning admin that is. jni (talk) 09:49, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

@User:Dlohcierekim: I agree with your de lege ferenda argument that foreign language should be a CSD criteria. jni (talk) 09:54, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

<<LOL>> Regrettably, my Latin(?) is insufficient & (ironically) this is gibberish to me. Dlohcierekim 14:07, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

That would be Lex ferenda. SamBC(talk) 14:18, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, @Sambc:. I figured it was Legal Latin, though I guessed wrong on ferenda. Somehow, and it may just be me, I find this sums up the point that unfamiliarity w/ a foreign language does not warrant speedy deletion of articles written in such a language. Dlohcierekim 14:38, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Jni, as far as I can see, no one asked you to create articles or redirects, or to expand articles. But when there is enough info that would allow someone else to do such expansion if desired, please do not delete as "no context". And the examples I pointed out, while generally poorly written and needing significant work if they were to survive an AfD, were rather more than "random words or sentence fragments". If you are going to work CAT:CSD (and that is valuable, you are expected to look at tagged articles and seriously and critically consider whether someone else might find the page as it stands of value in building a proper article, and whether any of the CSDs, read narrowly and strictly, apply. I have done a fair amount of CAT:CSD patrol, although I don't have nearly as many entries on my deletion log as you do -- but then I generally spend one or two minutes considering each item on the list. If you aren't willing to do that, perhaps your talents are better directed elsewhere. Not all of the examples I posted are language issues by any means, but all of them look to me like too hasty "oh this is not a decent article, let's delete it now" reactions. And I and others here and on your talk page have approached you civilly, and I would appreciate the same in response. DES ^(talk) 16:12, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Excuse me, but if you did not imply that I should expand on the content, then why did you even asked me for my reason for speedy deletioning content like [http://www.ldrb.org/ LANGPI DEHANGI RURAL BANK] that is just a single external link without any context, or [[REDIRECT|Matthew Schultz]] which has no content to salvage, as the obvious redirect can be created regardless of the deleted revisions (containing the G2 deleted test edits) in page history. You also claimed that deleting obvious drivel like UnKnoWn?? was somehow out-of-process (content of this was: UnKnoWn?? (Unknown for short) is a creepy user in the game pixel gun 3d. If unknown joins your game he will typically say "unknown is here, your life is over". He stalks players for no apparent reason or because they disturb him. He frequently says mind with random letters and numbers after it. He apparently has a good relationship with the gods because he quotes that the gods tell him to do many things. He says that his only friend is Steve. He is rarely seen so there are many things still to be determined about him but it is known that he is a white figure with question marks all over him. How incoherent the garbage must be for A11 (or some other criteria) to apply? I don't see much reason to listen to the feedback given to me here, as it is by and large factually incorrect and not useful in any case. jni (talk) 21:22, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, that UnKnoWn?? case would seem to be an A7, and also not related to the essential point here - text that you can't understand because it's not in English isn't A1able. SamBC(talk) 22:31, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

No it wouldn't be a valid A7, because it is about an element of a piece of software, a video game to be specific. That is not in-scope for A7. It is probably non-notable on its own, but it might be a valid part of an article on the game of which it is an element. To me the essential point here is not just language issues, it is failure to respect the limits of the CSDs, which are supposed to be narrow, bright-line criteria. Non-english content is only one aspect or instance of that. DES ^(talk) 22:53, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Jni, I didn't say or imply that you should do anything in particular. What i suggested was that you not do something, i.e. not delete pages which are not strictly covered by any of the CSDs. Ideally you would decline the CSD and remove the tag in such a case. That does not imply an obligation or an intention to expand the article. You could tag a page with a PROD when it doesn't meet any CSD, but you think it isn't a valid page. That still gives other editors a chance to expand the page into a decent article. Did that text not give you a clue that "pixel gun 3d" was a video game? One Google search would show that it is a published and fairly widely discussed, at least possibly notable, game. That is enough to give the page context, so that someone interested could expand, improve, or perhaps merge. Perhaps the text wasn't so incoherent as all that? I have no trouble understanding it. As to the LANGPI DEHANGI RURAL BANK page, that single link led to a page with ample content to source an article. That doesn't mean that you needed to write the article, but it also doesn't mean that you need make it harder for someone else to do so. (In that case, soemoen else now has done so.) The point isn't to require you to write any article you don't choose to, the point is that deletions outside the specific limits of the CSDs require discussion during which someone else might well improve the article to keep standard. You asked how many thousand deletions I (an d others posting here) have done. Well, how many article rescues have you performed? I am far prouder of the ones I have done than all my hundreds of deletions. DES ^(talk) 22:53, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

DESiegel, the pages you classified as "erroneous deletions" in my talk page and in your silly review subpage are mostly valid CSDs. Then you keep repeating, that I somehow should not make valid speedy deletions because someone might want to expand on the single external link in LANGPI DEHANGI RURAL BANK and other cases like that. If I were to follow your advice, that would kind of defeat the entire purpose of CAT:CSD and the consensus view is that we don't accumulate speedily deletable crap in vain hope that someone will someday salvage something useful out of it. There exists separate deletionpedia and speedy deletion wikis already, may I suggest you join those projects and help them classify their garbage that has been expunged from Wikipedia? "pixel gun 3d" may indeed be a video game. Why should I care one way or another what it is? The article was not about the game, but a creepy user playing it. The page is clearly speedy deletable by multiple criteria. A7 is the closest as the article is about a real human who is playing the game, as explicitly written in the article text itself, it is not about a non-person-character that is part of the video game software. In-universe fan-cruft invented by article creator is also what A11 could be used for, in case this was not part of game content but made-up by author. And that page has elements of an attack page as well (creepy user, speaks with gods etc.). jni (talk) 09:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

It is my view that an admin should always care about a page that s/he is considerin delting. In the case of the "pixel gun 3d" page, as I read it it eas about not a "creepy user" playing the game but a "creepy" character that is part of the game, in short it was a description of an aspect of the game. That is what brings it into the range of possible article status, in my view. (and also means it is not an attack on any person.) I am not saying that you should refrain from making valid CSD deletions. I am saying that you should be more careful to use accurate log entries when you do so, AND that you should be less broad in your interpretation of the individual CSDs. I disagree with your assessment in several of those cases, i thank that most of them were not valid CSDs under any criterion. Most of all, when someone approaches you questioning or challenging a deletion, as the Crisco did at the start of this thread, I wish you would be more civil and more accepting of the possibility that in a particular case you had made an error. DES ^(talk) 13:23, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Of course I know non-English text is not A1. Of course I know that gibberish is G1 or A1. So what if deleting admin cannot see the difference? The disagreement seems to be about the amount of effort deleting admin should perform to search for meaning in some random gibberish and second-guess the meaning of it instead of deleting it. It is a great way to build an encyclopedia, trying to decipher the meaning of some random garbage! You fail to see that CSD criteria are in fact subjective, because different people have different background knowledge and analytical skills for researching things. I'm sure DESiegel could recognize the context for an article containing

      ∇R←Fub N;A;⎕IO
[1]   ⎕IO←0
[2]   R←(N+A)⌽((2×N)⍴1 ¯1)\⍉A∘.!A←⍳N
[3]   ((0=,R)/,R)←⊂⍬
      ∇

while majority of admins would classify this as patent nonsense. jni (talk) 09:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm an admin, and it's obviously a program in APL. I don't know what it actually does, but the strange symbols (like ⌽⍉⊂⍬) are a dead giveaway for APL. A1 does not apply here. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:53, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

It is indeed an APL program. It displays an oddly formatted operations table for a rather obscure binary operation, and seems an odd example of APL, but it would run.

It is true that on some level a CSD, or indeed almost any rule or principal of judgement, must be interpreted in light of an individual's knowledge. I would hope that the regular structure of the above example would trigger some investigation, and it would be easy to find someone who knew tha tit was a short APL program. Even more obviously, when something is not English but is formed into what looks like words, a quick run through an online mechanical translator would give a good clue as to whether it has any content worth saving and what language it might be in. I don't think that is too much to ask of the reviewing admin. Really that is the difference, i hold that an admin going through CAT:CSD should think of him or herself as a reviewing admin, there to determine if things do or do not fit any of the CSDs. You have mentioned your large number of deletions -- how many articles tagged with speedy deletion tags have you declined? My experience is that about 1 in 3 articles so tagged are NOT valid speedys, and when patrolling CAT:CAS I tend to spend more time notifying taggers of such errors than on any other single part of the process. Do you do that? DES ^(talk) 13:23, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

For foreign language articles, we have a nice and not overworked process at WP:PNT, so there is no need to do very much for an admin encountering such a page other than listing at that page. However, the loss when such a page is deleted is usually not big, and many such pages are created in error and get re-created by their authors on the appropriate language Wikipedia anyway (and many more are copyvios). I spent a lot of time at WP:PNT a couple of years ago, but no longer believe that foreign language pages are worth that much fighting for. —Kusma (t·c) 13:43, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

If that coding was all the article consisted of, it could come under both context and content criteria. If there was other information, then the coding would be irrelevant as it would be an example. I've got no knowledge of APL at all - my programming was COBOL and some BASIC - but it is obviously not 'gibberish' as it is ordered. Peridon (talk) 17:25, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Meta-comment about this talk page

This talk page seems to be degenerating to some kind of kangaroo court where arm-chair theorists, many of whom have not even performed their first 1000 deletions, are idly speculating about the deletion policy and CSD criteria, sometimes just for the purpose of making it unnecessary hard for the admins who are actually cleaning the CAT:CSD garbage bin daily, to do their jobs. Recent suggestion that I should be de-sysopped just because some of my deletion log entries cited a wrong or misleading CSD criteria is the most striking example of over-reaction and hubris. Most editors in WP have not even heard of this talk page so I find the claims that votings here about the minute details and tweaking of the criteria represent consensus. I think they represent just the minority interests and desire for wiki rule-lawyering of the few editors who frequent this talk page. jni (talk) 10:13, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

So, what, every admin should follow the rules as they think they should be, rather than the policy and guidelines as actually set down? SamBC(talk) 13:10, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• Per Sambc, and note that you would not have received such feedback if you had been willing to listen to constructive input. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:51, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

As I alluded to above (and elsewhere), there are those who believe that you shouldn't delete without experience in deletion. Catch-22. So, when unsure, I ask what I believe to be sensible questions - but I didn't know that I needed to rack up 1000 deletions before I could comment here. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:06, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• You don't. Period. You shouldn't require something ridiculous like that. One of the benefits of transparent policies is that everyone can and should comment, giving different viewpoints on the same issue. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:10, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• Of course anyone can blatter whatever they want here; just don't be surprised if people who have considerable first-hand experience on the matter have little patience listening every comment from the "process is everything" theorists. We have editors like DESiegel, who has made 44 edits to speedy deletion criteria page itself and total 454 edits to this very talk page; that is about one edit per every six days or about one edit per three of his deletions. SoWhy has edited this talk page 696 times, with average time between edits less than 3 days! Ego White Tray has 39 and 154 edits, respectively, to this policy page but very little experience even tagging articles for CSD. So my question is, how much this policy, with all its unnecessaríly rigid rules, has been really shaped by the personal biases of the few top contributors from [3] and [4] Even if we remove bots, users who have left Wikipedia, and historical POV-crusaders like Tony Sideaway and Netoholic, we are left with less than 50 editors who have done the majority of edits here. When the rules are made by consensus of just few Wikipedia process wonks, I'd not expect they to be followed literally and mindlessly by the more practical editors. The more practical editors think what the policies really mean, and act accordingly, even if it is not according to the rule book down to the last detail. jni (talk) 21:11, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• Don't forget pages like Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal and its sub pages, and Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Archive, and similar pages, where you will find some of the early debates in which the CSDs were hashed out in considerable detail, and by rather more editors than you may be assuming. Those debates were widely advertised and widely participated in. I think you will find that they also included an assumption that CSDs were narrow, bright-line criteria, to be followed closely as written if a speedy deletion was to occur in any given case.

The general rule is, deletion requires consensus. The CSDs are the few, narrow, cases where consensus has been pre-obtained. If a page doesn't fit one of them, there is no advance consensus and an individual consensus must be established by discussion, or at least an invitation to discussion (PROD). Thus by trying to "think what the policies really mean, and act accordingly" you are in fact editing against consensus, and in violation of the deletion policy. Having made many deletions does not entitle you to make up deletion policy as you go along. DES ^(talk) 21:48, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• This is exactly why I opened the ANI thread... nothing seems to be getting through. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:03, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't have the patience at the moment to analyse people's editing records, but (naming no names) it does seem to me that there are regular names here that I don't see in the CSD workplace. Perhaps they are on at a different time of day. I joined Wikipedia to remove some information. You're welcome to go back to the start of my contribs and see what it was. I carried on correcting and tagging (with two or three articles along the way), and now I do correcting and deleting. Yes, there should be a fairly clear definition of what can and can't be deleted speedily, just as notability has to be defined. and usernames, and whatever. However, there seems at times to be a restrictively inclusionist tendency that would perhaps not want every article kept in case it might be improved some day, but stops very close to that line, and seems also to want to restrict CSD so far as to make it useless. If we stopped speedy deleting for a few days, and took everything to AfD, it could be very interesting. Don't forget that even in the narrow definitions, there has to be an element of assessment. "Shane is a beast." - is that an attack? If it's all there is, it's going to be an A7 anyway. But should it be left for an hour or so to see if it gets improved, or deleted straightway? How credible does 'credible' have to be? Why is it that the majority of people who describe themselves as 'entrepreneurs' - or even 'entreprenuers' - are so blatantly non-notable? (Don't answer that one...) 8-) Peridon (talk) 13:22, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• I don't usually go around defending myself but I don't think jni's comment above can be left unanswered (my first edit to this page since March 2013 btw). I can't speak for DESiegel but I don't think commenting on this page means shaping policy. The majority of comments on this page are either requests to change CSD which had been discussed to death previously or questions about whether a certain page is covered and my edits to this page often were regarding such comments. Yes, I participated in policy discussions as well but those were not the only things discussed here and the above comment implies this. But the idea that "if the policy says X and I don't think it's right, I should ignore it" is a valid approach to deletions is problematic and displays a fundamental lack of understanding about consensus. It doesn't matter how many people were actually involved in shaping a policy, it matters that all editors were able to participate and if you unilaterally decide to ignore policy because you think it's wrong, you are basically saying "screw you". It'd be like a judge saying "well, the law does not say your behavior is punishable but I think you should be punished anyway". Also, I for example have more than 8000 deletions from my more active times as an admin, so it's completely possible to follow policy and still delete a lot of pages. Regards SoWhy 18:41, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• The consensus operating in this and related talk pages (including the polls/votes etc. cited in this discussion) is a WP:CONLIMITED phenomenon. The consensus also gave us WP:IAR, our best weapon against the "process is important" school of Wikipedia deletion theory! IAR was not done by few editors in one obscure corner of Wikipedia, it is one of the Five Pillars; erected by the global consensus of the community. Like Peridon, I have noticed that the group of people actually processing the back-log is largely different than the talk-page editors discussing how it should be done. Here is a newsflash to all frequent readers here: You don't actually WP:OWN the CAT:CSD garbage dump, so what will you do if I simply WP:IAR your little WP:CONLIMITED consensus when emptying it? I have deleted thousands of pages just like Angerism or UnKnoWn?? and will continue to delete thousands more of their kind. If your limited consensus gives me silly rules like: If article that is blatant nonsense cannot be determined to be about a real person (A7) or imaginary person, made-up by article creator (A11), it must be minimally PRODded instead of speedily deleted or Wrong rule numbers cited in deletion log entries are grounds for immediate desysopping or If test page (G2) might be a redirect, the redirect must be created by deleting admin (no matter what how close (R3) it might be, presumably), or You must use X amount of effort to search for context for short and contextless articles from web-services A,B, and C or anything of that nature, then we deleting admins can simply ignore the petty little rules, and especially talk-page interpretations of them, made-up by select few deletion-theorists and process improvers. jni ^(delete)_{just not interested} 19:55, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

A7 query

The A7 criteria says "The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source". So how can any claim of significance/importance be credible if there are no reliable sources supporting it? -- SMS ^Talk 05:14, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not, and never has, required every statement to be verified with a source, only that it can be. Just because the editor didn't put sources in, doesn't mean they don't exist. Ego White Tray (talk) 05:23, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually I fail to understand the use of word "Credible" there. 1. How to judge whether a claim is credible or not without a source? 2. And what if you try and don't find a source for that claim? Is it still credible? -- SMS ^Talk 05:32, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

In my mind, a "statement of importance" which is "not credible" statement is one that is so dubious that if there was a reference I would seriously wonder if the reference was from an un-reliable source, if it was a totally faked reference, or if the "reference" that didn't really back up what the Wikipedia editor claimed it backed up. For example, this would qualify with or without the listed reference: "Jack Smith is a man in Hunstville, Alabama who was turned into a Vampire on Halloween Night 1989<ref>Weekly World News, November 15, 1989, "Dixie Vampire!"</ref>." It's not that such an article couldn't be accepted, it's just that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof - I would want to see multiple reputable news agencies independently covering this person's magical transformation before I would believe it (see: WP:HOAX), much less claim that it doesn't qualify under A7 (or {{db-hoax}} for that matter). Most A7's don't even bother to make a claim that rises to the level of "significance or importance." "Joe Smith is a science teacher at City High School. He won Teacher of the Year last year.<ref>City High School Gazette, May 20, 2013, "Joe Smith Wins the TotY"</ref>" is a credible claim, but it is not a "claim of significance or importance" in Wikipedia terms (although, to be fair, it probably is a "claim of significance or importance" in the eyes of the author. Sorry kid, the world doesn't care about your science teacher if the most important thing he did in his life was win "teacher of the year" in his school. Write your article when he's invited to the White House for being our nation's best teacher.)

I think we had this discussion sometime in the last few months. Check the talk page archives. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 07:19, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

More or less we did, yes. Perhaps the text ought to say "...even if the claim is not cited to a reliable source". If there is no source, the article will eventually be deleted at an AfD, we presume. But if there is a claim but no citation, we need someone to do WP:BEFORE to check on where such a source can be found, and perhaps whether the source is reliable adn the discussion sufficient to establish notability. That is beyond what can be expected at the speedy deletion level, or reliably done by only one or two editors, so any plausible claim, even if not cited to a source, is enough that A7 does not apply. My classic of an implausible claim is "John Jones is the current king of the world." A plausible claim might be "Jane Smith went on a national tour with her band, The Janeites." DES ^(talk) 07:33, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

See the following for recent discussion of when A& applies, there is far more further back in the archives:

• Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 51#A7 et al and Inherent notability
• Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 52#A7 invalid if a source is present?

Happy reading. DES ^(talk) 07:57, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I might put it: "a credible claim is any claim that is not blatantly absurd". DES ^(talk) 08:02, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

SMS, sourcing is entirely irrelevant to the "credible claim of significance". A7 only qualifies as stated above by DES, sources or not. Ego White Tray (talk) 16:55, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps "plausible" is a better term than "credible" then? WilyD 20:14, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Is your "blatantly absurd" in this context the same as "blatant and obvious misinformation"? If we are talking about meanings of words here, might be good idea to check their interpretation is consistent between all criterias, so that we don't have many different "credible", "plausible", "blatant" etc. in use. jni ^(delete)_{just not interested} 20:02, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

SMS: think about it this way. An article need only indicate importance or significance to withstand deletion under A7; we are not assessing whether the claim of importance is backed up by evidence at speedy deletion (whereas we do require that when we are delving deeper, at a deletion discussion on the merits at Article for Deletion). We thus take the text at its face when making an A7 assessment, but the claim needs to be credible/plausible, or, the other way around, it can't be on its face incredible/implausible. So, "X is the president of Y college" is a credible claim, but "X is the president of Harvard University despite being only five years old" is not – the latter does indicate importance, it's just incredible.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:14, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

<shameless self-promotion>

I did collect a number of indicators when A7 shouldn't be used based on my experience as a user and admin @ WP:A7M. Maybe it can help. Usually an article that meets one or more of the criteria mentioned there passes A7 (exceptions apply).

</shameless self-promotion>

Regards SoWhy 18:22, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

<ruthless criticism>

OK. One, you need to add 'organised events' in. Two, ANYONE can decline a speedy. I declined loads when I was patrolling Edits by Recent Accounts (or whatever it's called - I was never on NPP, being naturally inclined to go in a different direction to everyone else...). Perhaps don't put the same tag back after an admin has declined it, but one may argue (not usually with DGG...) if based firmly on the criteria. There's often another criterion to use anyway... I can't think of a rule that says an admin's decision is final on a speedy tag - even after they've deleted it. We rooster-up at times just like the mere mortals. (Worded so as not to offend US citizens who are worried about what to call male hens...) Three, you need to put in something about GETTING IT RIGHT. Until I learned them, I used to keep the CSD criteria in an open window when on patrol. Four, 'notable'. A9 refers to non-articled bands. How does one assess a company, say, whose CEO has a vanity article posted? If it has a long established company article, one is on fairly safe ground in declining to delete the CEO (so long as it doesn't fall foul of spam and/or copyvio as well). If it doesn't have one, is it notable? If it has one posted about five minutes before the CEO's, what then? Awards - if something claims to have won the Hetty Spangler Award, is it a credible claim to significance?

</ruthless criticism>

Actually, quite a nice bit of work. I've been thinking of writing one myself to save typing. I do enjoy inventing examples, though. I don't think there's a totally safe answer to any of this. It all boils down to 'is this piece of string greenish blue or bluish green?'. Not to mention how long the piece of turquoise-ish string is. 8-) Peridon (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Let me reply directly here: 1) The list is not complete and you are welcome to make edits to the essay if they are in the same spirit. 2) I'm not sure about today but a few years back, the consensus was, that a user removing a speedy means they contest its validity while an admin's decision binds all other admins for this criterion and others they clearly could have applied because of WP:WHEEL. 3) I have WP:10CSD as an essay that (basically) says that. 4) The point about CEOs (and other such persons) made by the examples is that e.g. the CEO of Coca-Cola shouldn't be deleted because the claim "CEO of Coca-Cola" is sufficient. Of course, if the company's notability is not clear, the CEO's article can't be kept just because of being CEO of said company (unless the article about them claims the significance of the company as well). 5) That should have been "notable" award of course. Will fix. Regards SoWhy 22:38, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I like this also. a comment or two:

• "Has received coverage of any kind in possibly reliable sources" If the coverage is merely a a directory entry or other passing mention that would be ignored in an AfD, this may not be a claim of significance. "John Snow is a dentist" sourced to a highly reliable online directory of dentists is not a claim of significance. Also see discussions at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 52#A7 invalid if a source is present?. But in general a mention in a RS, especially an independent RS, moves a subject out of A7 land IMO.
• "Has multiple Google News hits that cover this subject explicitly" the recent changes in scope of Google News makes it almost worthless for wikipedia It not longer returns items older than 30 days.
• "is a teacher at a notable university" I would want something beyond merely being a teacher/professor
• "Wrote for notable magazines/newspapers" I would make that multiple notable magazines/newspapers, merely being a staff writer on even the NY Times or London Times is not enough for me, there being so many.
• "Is part of a nation's government" This would not, perhaps, include departments of local subdivisions of governments, i.e a town's sanitary department is in a sense "part" of a nation's government, but would not be auto-exempt from A7. If we take "part of a nations" to mean "on a national level" then I am pretty much ok with this.

That is a rather helpful page. Perhaps it could even get consensus as a guideline? DES ^(talk) 00:39, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

• Your later ones are too focused on whether the person is likely to be notable, which isn't the standard. The standard is that the article must contain no "indication of importance". In other words, it doesn't tell us enough to even start a discussion on whether the subject is notable. The writer for the NYT, we can take to AfD, and discuss whether they are a notable writer that has, for instance, attracted critical attention, or is a non-notable staff writer. Likewise, the University professor, we know what to look for to analyze professor notability, and so we should have that discussion at AfD. If I just say "John Doe is a great dentist" we don't even have a starting point to even discuss notability, as there is nothing there. Monty₈₄₅ 03:08, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

• You are correct on the standard, Monty, but of course a clear indication that a person or thing is notable must imply a claim of significance. If you are saying that I am setting the bar too high, and requiring notability instead of mere indication of significance, well that wasn't my intent. If you are referring to SoWhy's "Common indications" for people and organization, they are no so much focused on the notability of the article subject as on whether it is in some way associated with some other notable subject, presumably one whose notability is already established by having an unchallenged article, or is tolerably obvious. DES ^(talk) 20:48, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

• You are setting the bar extremely high, in some cases higher even than AfD, and I would not agree with any of the proposed rules as they apply to CSD. CSD is for what can unambiguously be determined to be hopeless without the need for research. The way I interpret credible is very simple: anything which would in good faith lead someone with a knowledge of the nature of an encyclopedia to think that the material might possibly be suitable. Writing for any magazine might, or publishing any book, or having even local significance, or being mentioned in even the most local of papers, or being on a team that won a local championship, or being CEO of any public company. I've never used the Googles or any reference book in screening speedies. If I can't tell on the face of it that its insignificant, it's not for me to delete it. If it's a field I don't understand without help from Google, I leave it for those who do. DGG ( talk ) 01:24, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Agree with DGG. CSD is only for obvious insignificance. If any more thought than that is required, it should not be CSD'd. I do not understand the urge to speedily delete when other processes exist that are more appropriate. Obviously not notable? PROD. Dlohcierekim 02:52, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

RfC announcement

Please see the RfC at Wikipedia talk:The answer to life, the universe, and everything/Archive 2#RfC: Is this an information page or is it an essay? --Guy Macon (talk) 01:25, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

A7 What does it mean?

Recently (while performing page curation) I came accross an article (XERC-AM)). At the time, it stated that it was a radio station started in 1946 in Mexico City. To my mind, that does not "indicate the importance or significance of the subject." I therefore tagged it as A7. It was declined as "a silly nomination". On the other hand an article starting "Ritmeyer is a prominent niche piano company, known for making pianos of ..." has been deleted. Sadly, I only have the snippet that google extracted to go on, because the article was deleted per A7. When I challenged the deleting administrator he diclined because "If the the phrase you quote were all it took to get past an A7, almost any article with a small, non-specific bit of puffery would do so." I can see his point of course, but then again the article on the radio station did not even have that. I am sorry, but this category is now absolutely baffling. Op47 (talk) 16:33, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

There is consensus it seems that radio stations are all significantly notable enough, if they were licensed at some point and barely even requires proof of licensing. The piano company one, with nothing proving "niche" will fail ES&L 16:41, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

It's worth noting that a radio station that merely rebroadcasts another station is not notable, though. But not speedy deletable anyway, since it takes some research and discussion to see if it's the case. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:55, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Such repeater stations are rarely organizations as such and they are never one of the other A7-eligible things. Repeaters are usually affiliated with the station that they repeat. The combined organization is an organization. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 04:24, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I would have to disagree with you. I believe a radio station - even if it's a one-man operation - is an organisation by most people's definition, and I don't think any deletion nomination should ever be dismissed as silly. If such a nomination is overruled, a reason should be given - otherwise how can inexperienced editors hope to learn? Deb (talk) 09:47, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

But do they really even have to learn the overly detailed A7 interpretations discussed herein? I can see more productive uses for time than following the latest deletion-theoretical discussions about various classes of radio-stations. jni ^(delete)_{just not interested} 19:30, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it seems like there is never one universally-accepted interpretation of any of the guidelines.Deb (talk) 09:47, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

@Deb: What I meant is that the owner of the repeater station is frequently the owner of the station that it repeats. Both can be covered under the same article. However, you are correct, if the repeater station is a separate legal entity with no connection to the station it is repeating other than perhaps a contractual one (e.g. primary station pays the repeater station to carry its signal), that is different than if the primary station owns and operates the repeater station. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 02:56, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I see what you mean.Deb (talk) 09:47, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Thankyou all for trying to answer the question. What I was driving at is: I am a (relatively) new volunteer for page curation. Even after careful perusal of the standards/guidelines, I would not have guessed that radio stations are an exception to A7. Also, it turns out that I was correct and the piano company should not have been deleted per A7 (it was reprieved at a deltion review). Perhaps there should be some kind of caveat to the criteria that it is intended for the most frivilous cases and perhaps some examples both ways with explanation. Op47 (talk) 15:19, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Articles for creation jokes

I had previously thought that article submissions in articles for creation that were obviously just jokes or just random gibberish should be speedy deleted. But now I see that there is a Category:AfC submissions declined as jokes, so I am unsure, are we just holding joke articles in limbo for six months before we speedy delete them, or should they be prodded? I just don't see a reason to decline submissions like Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Being a Towel instead of just outright deleting them.AioftheStorm (talk) 03:32, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Maybe we could create a CSD D1: Hopeless draft. There'd be lots of details to sort out, though. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:34, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

• Why wouldn't CSD:G1 or CSD:G3 apply? Technically, even CSD:G2 is fair game as none of them exclude Draft: or AFC project space (although they do exclude the sandbox itself and user space drafts). — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 04:01, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
  • They do apply. A Wikiproject cannot start making their own rules so I'd advice just deleting the hopeless drafts where it is really, really 100% sure they cannot be improved. I'm not against keeping few as BJAODN if there is great humour value though :) jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 08:12, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I'd say that that towel could be hung up as a hoax... The so-called references are ludicrous and it's obviously not encyclopaedic. Very close to G13, but just lacks the 'made up by...' bit. A lot of these would-be humorous things can easily be classed as hoax or G13. Peridon (talk) 10:55, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I'd say it's closer to a non-notable neologism, which are traditionally PROD'ed. Maybe PROD for draft and/or afc space would be a good idea. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:19, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for the feedback everybody, I will go ahead then and just PROD clear joke articles in afc from now on then.AioftheStorm (talk) 22:58, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

No, PROD is currently unusable unless we change the PROD policy, which we should not be doing on this page. It is explicitly for mainspace articles, lists and disam pages, and cannot be used for drafts of any kind. I would not support such a policy change, because the basis of PROD is that if the editor involved has any objection, they can remove the prod and force a discussion.For AfCs, there is too little chance of the editor still being around. This may not be relevant for such joke pages, but it would be hard to limit Prod to those types of pages without letting it be used for all drafts and AfCs, which I think much too expansive. What I use for such articles is CSD G2, test page, and I've never had one challenged.

That said, we do have a problem with patently unsuitable drafts of various sorts sitting around for the six months, and I'm trying to think of the best way they can be handled. There is of course MfD, which we have widely used for many years for user-space drafts, and it can be very efficient. DGG ( talk ) 01:51, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

I wish you posted this before all my PRODs got reverted and replaced with SD's :P

I think MfD will suffice for the non-hoaxes, updating guidelines is commonly rife with trouble, and simply expanding PRODs scope to include AfC without any additional changes wouldn't work.AioftheStorm (talk) 02:33, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

G13 is a very narrowly defined criterion for a very good reason. We're now already at the 6 month + 30 day window for the bot cleaning out stale drafts, I would estimate there's probably ~5k pages that are in the AfC space currently so the quantity that we'd be hitting with a new speedy criteria is so small that it's not worth the effort. Hasteur (talk) 16:58, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

No more speedy deletes based on importance!

I feel that every article should be kept regardless of importance. Wikipedia is supposed to have information on a variety of topics even those about small things with little significance. That way, people can find information about those topics that may not be found anywhere but Wikipedia. I created the article Fresh Air Aviation, and not even thirty minutes later, it was marked for speedy deletion! That's not fair! I think that people should stop marking articles for speedy deletion based on importance.

-Sparkyb10123 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:07, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

The problem is if we remove that we would need to keep something like Bill goes to High School X he is cool until an AFD is finished. If this particular article was badly tagged the best thing to do would be to contest this particular deletion not to remove A7 which will cause a large backlog or articles that had no chance whatsoever of being kept at AFD.--174.93.163.194 (talk) 23:38, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I deleted the above article. It was a clear case of an A7 speedy deletion as it stood. As many people here know I am quite strict about speedy deletions particularly A7s, and decline more speedy tags than i accept. There has long been a consensus that certain types of articles, including articles about companies, must show some indication of importance in order to remain in mainspace, as many of them are crated only to be deleted via AfD if they are not speedy deleted. While you are welcome to start an RfC to change this practice and the policy it is based on, i do not think such a proposal would succeed

However, sparkyb10123, if you think you could edit Fresh Air Aviation so that it demonstrates notability, as per WP:CORP, then I will restore it for you in the Draft: namespace, or in a userspace sub-page if you wish. Just drop me a note with such a request. DES ^(talk) 00:12, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

By the way, your argument against speedy deletion on the talk page was: "...it is no less important than other articles like it.". That argument almost never works, see WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. However, I did propose the other article you linked as an example for deletion also, so youa re not being singled out. DES ^(talk) 00:12, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Ultimately, the reason for our main inclusion criterion is that we only summarise information that's already published in reliable sources that're independent of the subject (well, plus what the subject says about themselves). We do this to ensure both that our information is verifiable, and that it can be written neutrally. Otherwise, if we're only regurgitating what the company is saying about itself, who wants our vomit? Nobody. The should just go to the horse's mouth in that case. WilyD 06:09, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The proposal won't work on logistical grounds alone. A7 is by far the most popular reason for deleting articles. If we got rid of it the AfD and PROD processes would see their workload expand dramatically - I think it would almost triple. The article in this case was a textbook case of A7. Hut 8.5 07:40, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Sparkyb10123, where do you get the idea that "Wikipedia is supposed to have information on a variety of topics even those about small things with little significance"? It has been Wikipedia for many years that we don't have articles on "small things with little significance". It is, unfortunately, true that a good many people make the mistake of thinking that "anyone can add anything to Wikipedia, no matter how trivial or inappropriate", but that has never been Wikipedia policy. If you wish to get Wikipedia policy changed to "anything that anyone chooses to put on Wikipedia, no matter how insignificant, can stay", then you are going to have a very long hard job of persuading people, because the policy that we have articles only on notable topics is very well established, and has a very good deal of consensus behind it. In the unlikely event that you succeed in getting that change, Wikipedia will degenerate to the same level as all the countless trivial forums and blogs that are populated largely by teenage children. Wikipedia is taken more notice of than those forums and blogs precisely because it does impose standards, and doesn't accept just any trivial stuff that some kid or other decides to post. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:55, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

"sHAUN IS aAAWWWEEESSSSOOOOMMMEEEEE!!!" - a small thing with little significance (he's 8 years old and very ordinary and can't even get caps lock right). That's all there is in the article - apart from a Reference to 'everyone knows'. Is that worth keeping for seven days to discuss? OK, that's an exaggerated example (I have really seen "Shaun is awesome" as an 'article'). There is always debate about the boundaries. Would anyone (apart from the not really awesome Shaun) really think that that should be kept? Peridon (talk) 16:52, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

That's not what I meant by "Wikipedia is supposed to have information on a variety of topics even those about small things with little significance". What I meant was Wikipedia is not just for info on big things like Napoleon but also is supposed to have info on things like small towns and stuff that a regular encyclopedia might not have.

-sparkyb10123 (talk)

Re: "That way, people can find information about those topics that may not be found anywhere but Wikipedia" - Wikipedia is not a web-hosting service. You are welcome to start a web site of your own and put up whatever content you want, subject to the terms and conditions of your web-hosting provider or ISP and to any applicable laws. If you prefer a "Wiki" the pages listed in Category:Wiki farms may be useful. Disclaimer: Do not consider this a recommendation for or against any company, product, or service that is or is not mentioned in any of these pages. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:19, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Perennial, much? Fiddle Faddle 17:25, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I have frequently seen people insisting that the particular article(s) that they have drafted should be kept, that the world as we know it will end if they are not kept, that the articles are about a vitally important subject, etc. I have quite rarely seen anyone with such a viewpoint come to this page and suggest changing the rules to eliminate A7 speedies. That said, this is another example where patrolling new pages from the back of the queue (as is often recommended but apparently often not done) might have been a tad less WP:BITEy without letting an unwanted article stay long. In some cases this allows an article drafter time to properly source it or expand it so that a clear claim of significance is added. But even when that is unlikely, the drafter may feel a bit less hard-done-by, at very little cost to the project. DES ^(talk) 18:04, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

@Sparkyb10123: While I cannot speak to the content, but I have to go with what others who can peek at the deleted article say. I would also note that if you had created the submission in one of the approved incubator areas (like your sandbox, Articles for creation, or the like) you probably would have received coaching about how to improve the submission so that it could move to mainspace. The CSD criteria have been refined and finessed for many years to ensure that they capture the appropriate amount of content that is not suitable for inclusion. Hasteur (talk) 18:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

It was one of two air services between Charlevoix, Michigan (pop 2513) and Beaver Island (Lake Michigan) (pop 657). The aircraft apparently seat 6-9 passengers. The other company Island Airways has just made it to notability because of work sparked off (sorry) by this thread. Peridon (talk) 18:39, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

If you will permit me to be pendantic for a moment, if Island Airways is a notable company (and it appears to be at first glance) then the company was notable at least as far back as September 2013, even if the article didn't adequately demonstrate the company's notability. Topics are notable. Articles about topics demonstrate that the topic is notable, or if they do not, the articles may wind up being tagged (Template:Notability, etc.), deleted (A7, PROD, AFD, etc.), or, if the topic is notable and editors are willing to put out the effort, improved (as with the Island Airways article). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:52, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

It was a short stub (infobox, two sentences of text, a two-item bulleted list) about an defunct airline. It might have had potential for expansion, so to me wasn't an immediate case for A7. What I will say is that N4 (talk · contribs) was way too WP:BITEy in tagging it {{db-inc}} just four minutes after creation. This was not a WP:BLP issue nor an WP:ATTACK, so a quick trigger finger was unwarranted. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:33, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Redrose64 (talk)- it wasn't bitey. I treated the article in good faith - no shouting, no vandalism notices. I don't think I was even remotely hostile. Speaking as a new editor myself I'd much rather have an article I spent a whole four minutes making deleted after just four minutes, discover the notability criteria (alongside many other guidelines) and then work out the article doesn't belong in Wikipedia. That way I can get on with something more constructive with minimal time wasted. It certainly beats creating an article, making incremental edits over a few days, finding out the article has been deleted a few days later anyway and THEN discover the notability criteria and other policies. Regarding the proposal, I agree with the reasons above for keeping A7. N4 (talk) 21:09, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I refer you to the text at the top of Special:NewPages, particularly the first box and the first two bullets. Although these refer to cleanup tags and the A1/A3 criteria, I consider that they also apply to most speedy deletion tags. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:28, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

N4, in regard to Fresh Air Aviation, I tend to agree with Redrose64 giving things 10 minutes at least before speedy-tagging is generally a good idea. On the other hand, it had been tagged for roughly 1 hr 40 mins before I deleted it, and no content had been added. Sparkyb10123 has been offered the content restored as a draft (userspace or Draft: namespace) multiple times, and has not asked for this so far. So perhaps it wouldn't have mattered had the tagging been delayed a bit in this case. DES ^(talk) 21:41, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Showing your age there? NewPages has been deprecated and replaced with Special:NewPagesFeed. Hasteur (talk) 21:34, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:NPP#Be nice to the newbies says in part: Research has shown that writers unfamiliar with Wikipedia guidelines should be accorded at least 10 to 15 minutes to fix the article before it is nominated for speedy deletion. If you see a page that has been tagged too hastily, please notify the tagger about their hasty deletion with the {{uw-hasty}} template. the principle is the same. DES ^(talk) 21:45, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Special:NewPagesFeed is a pain in the ass. It only shows 10 entries (instead of almost 40) per screenful, with a lot of wasted space. It doesn't give advice to patrol from the back, not to bite the newbies, nor to consider waiting before tagging - either on the main page or on Wikipedia:Page Curation/Help. Compare Wikipedia:New pages patrol. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:52, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Page Curation/Help should probably incorporate a fair amount of content from Wikipedia:New pages patrol, perhaps via shared templates. DES ^(talk) 22:26, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The theory of "be nice to article creators by deliberately making deletion inefficient and slow" school of though that is operating here fails in practice because:

1. >90% of the CAT:CSD material IS crap that cannot be improved in any finite amount of time.
2. The clueless newbies don't suddenly and magically acquire a clue within 15 minutes. If you wait for someone to figure out if his garage band or mom and pap shop is notable or not, you'll wait forever.
3. If we start waiting before tagging, we increase the size of the CAT:CSD backlog and may let crap pass through the patrol. Not everyone who is participating to this process has time to watch after marginal articles and interrupt their current work to see if something they saw in past requires tagging now. Having to wait for arbitrary periods hampers other wikipedia work.
4. Deletion is always undoable, so there is little lost if we have to restore few articles now and then.

While the article we are discussing here does not belong to class #1 hopeless articles, and is likely salvageable and was better than most A7 cases, it still was not improved during the nearly two hours it was in the junk-yard entry bin waiting the shredder. It has still not been restored and has not been even listed to WP:DRV. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 08:02, 12 February 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

While I'm rather inclusionist, I can't put enough emphasis on the fact that it's not more friendly to a newcomer who creates an article that has no hopes to delay deleting it. If it meets the speedy deletion criteria (bar A1 and A3 which could have a few hours grace at least), it should just go now. I'd argue its far worse to let a newcomer think that the material is maybe ok and needs to be discussed than letting a newcomer know in a kind and frank manner that the material is not suitable for inclusion, will be deleted, and help them out with what to write about or how to write so that it is not deleted. Speedy deletion is for stuff that can't be salvaged. If it can't, there is no use in keeping it around for longer to be 'friendly' and not to bite. If it can, than it shouldn't be speedily deleted at all, not after some grace period either. I pretty much oppose the notion that PROD is "deliberately making deletion inefficient and slow". It's a very light, very simple process with little red tape. I wish it would be used more often rather than pushing for speedy. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:36, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Martijn Hoekstra, the problem is that one can't always tell what "can't be salvaged" at a glance. I ask you to look seriously at this version of an article] as it was when it was tagged for speedy deletion. Honestly, would you ahve deleted that as it stood? I declined the speedy and put in a little time trying to source it. Look at the current version of the article, which is currently up for a DYK slot. was this "stuff that can't be salvaged"? DES ^(talk) 23:41, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Jni, you say "Deletion is always undoable, and strictly speakign that is true. However deleted articles are visible only to admins, and not conveniently even to them -- one must know the exact name. A salvageable but deleted article will normally stay deleted unless the creator tries again and complains, and finds a helpful admin or editor. This is not nearly as common as it should be, IMO. You say that "90% of the CAT:CSD material IS crap that cannot be improved" but I find when I patrol CAT:CSD that roughly 3 in 4 tags should not have been placed (outside of G13) and of the ones I decline, something between 1/2 and 1/3 survive. You say that If we start waiting before tagging, we increase the size of the CAT:CSD backlog. How does it increase the backlog to patrol the older items in it first? the same time spent on patrol, more or less the same number of pages patrolled, but significant added time for editors to finish, expand, and improve articles. Many won't, but some will. And what is the cost to starting with the oldest in the feed? Its been recommended as good practice at WP:NPP for years. DES ^(talk) 23:51, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Jni my ping above was messed up, so i am repeating it here. DES ^(talk) 23:53, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

(your first nor second ping did not work). I don't want to give instructions to New Pages patrollers about how they should do it or comment on someone elses instructions about NPP. Some of them start from oldest, some from newest, and the latter is the best way to deal with vandals. That case of db-tagging is just one side product of vandal fighting and it certainly cannot be postponed by some delay rule lest vandals create more garbage to clean up. Maybe our statistics differ because you seem to concentrate your efforts to rescuing stuff, while I'm mostly hunting the obvious cases but your claim of 3 out of 4 being erroneously tagged is simply unbelievable. Are we working on the same junkyard here? You seem to occasionally set the deletion bar extremely high, even higher than AfD at times. If you want to see why postponing deletion does not work, you only have to look of the impossibly large backlog of poor, declined articles that the AfC wikiproject managed to poduce. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 08:02, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Jni, the speedy deletion bar is supposed to be set significantly higher than AfD, or to put it more usually, the inclusion bar, particularly for A7, A9, and A11 is much lower than AfD, by design. At AfD true notability must be demonstrated, to avoid ab A7 speedy a mere unsourced "claim of significance" will do. While editors vary on exactly what constituted a "claim of significance", pretty much everyone agrees that it includes many things that do not establish notability, but merely suggest that notability might (or might not) be found if someone looks. DES ^(talk) 17:45, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

That said, it seems to me that my own informal estimate of my percentages was not quite right. I just went through the logs of roughly the last two weeks of my CAT:CSD patrols. The results are at User:DESiegel/CSDLog. Of mainspace items patrolled (things in other namespaces have other issues and aren't comparable in my view) I deleted 24 of 47, which is 51% and a fraction. Still, that is a long way from your "90% crap" estimate. DES ^(talk) 17:45, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I was referring to your keep bar which seems to be too inclusionist to me :) (I think everyone participating to this discussion is familiar with the difference of notability in AfD vs. significance claim in A7). I don't log my CSDs, as we admins have the license to shoot garbage at sight and I have never had any interest in statistics gathering, so the standard deviation of my "90% crap" is likely much bigger than the error bars around your self-estimate. Also, the salvageable/crap ratio is not necessarily stable over time as some speedily deletable material might be hiding in AfC-space, undetected so far because of big backlog. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 07:24, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the wikiproject created the backlog. It seems the submitters of articles have been creating that, and the wikiproject has been working to keep it down. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:21, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

While the creators are, of course, ultimately to blame, I feel that the reviewers could have CSD tagged more blatant copyvios, hoaxes and attacks that were instead merely declined with polite advice on how to do it better. And then the articles sat there festering for years. Yes, there was an overload, and some reviewers might not have known they could CSD tag these things. I'm happy for things to be rescued. I'm not happy for stuff that's obvious crap to be kept in case someone invents a magic wand. I'm not talking here about the corner florist's shop, the schoolboy athlete who has never competed outside his school team, the creator of open source software that is very useful to three specialised businesses in East Timor. I'm talking about stuff that should be obvious to anyone adminning or reviewing. - the colony of purple poodles living protected by a forcefield in a ghost town in Arizona, the scabrous attack on a fellow pupil and his mother, and so on. (examples are fictional - I don't keep lists of real ones - but they are not out of the ordinary for stuff preserved at AfC) Peridon (talk) 14:08, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree completely about getting rid of the garbage early, and it will be very helpful for some of us accustomed to working at NPP to take a quick look at submitted articles very early on--the people actually giving advice will be able to do it better with the lowest layer removed. (In that connection, when deleting G13 I also add other reasons when applicable, when needed to discourage recreation.) But I think the afc people--myself included -- feel that G11 in particular should to be used much more cautiously, because we expect that many AfCs will get major rewriting. I use it only for the outright advertisements, or where the topic is such that I am sure there is no chance of anything nonpromotional being written.

As for the percentage of blatantly unacceptable articles, my estimates agree with DES: before we had AfC , the percentage at NPP was about 50% rather consistently over many years. It has been lower the last 6 months as much of the junk was diverted to AfC, but I think 50% at AfC is just about what would be expected, and what we must expect to continue. On a positive note, looking at much of what was accepted here in past years, our standards for promotionalism have fortunately gotten somewhat more restrictive; I do not despair of continuing to raise them, but it will happen slowly. DGG ( talk ) 04:29, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Over the last few days, in reviewing AfC submissions. I have encountered some quite promotional articles for topics of very borderline importance at best that we would have deleted as G11 if they were articles. (The practice at AfC has been for G11 to be used for AfCs only for the most outrageous, as the AfCs are there because they can at least theoretically be improved) . For those that have been resubmitted multiple times without any sign of improvement -- a common practice of some probably paid editors-- I have been listing them for G11, since in practice they will not be improved by normal editing, This doesn;t require a rule change, it just needs keeping an eye out for them. DGG ( talk ) 19:43, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing this good example about subjectiveness of a CSD rule and need for admin discretion when applying it! jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 20:13, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposed F12: Files dependent on a speedily deleted page

Personally, I think this situation happens enough to make it something we can speedy...

F12: Files dependent on a speedily deleted page: Orphaned files that were originally uploaded for a page that was speedily deleted, and have no foreseeable use elsewhere.

This would allow images that were uploaded for say, pages that end up failing A7 or G11, to be immediately deleted if they cannot be used elsewhere once the article itself is deleted. I made it apply to speedy deletions only on purpose, but if anyone thinks it should apply to AFDs too, be my guest. ViperSnake151  Talk  05:03, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

• Conditional oppose. The criterion as written is incredibly nebulous and doesn't suggest any files that would be eligible for the criterion. I can't see any way of objectively determining whether a file has a use elsewhere. Understand that fair use images can already be speedily deleted after their article page has been removed. So I guess I don't see what images could possibly apply, nor how you would apply the criterion objectively in the first place. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 05:34, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
• Question: ViperSnake151, aren't orphaned unusable files already eligible for speedy after seven days, or is that only on commons? If it is only on commons, I don't see any reason not to have a similar 7-day speedy option here as well. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 05:35, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

  That's for non-free files. ViperSnake151  Talk  05:38, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

  Okay, but if they are free files, don't they belong on commons instead of enwp anyway? In those cases, shouldn't they simply be moved to commons instead of deleted? — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 05:41, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

  Yes, that's exactly right. As discussed when this was proposed five years ago, useful free files should be transferred to Commons and non-useful free files — excepting those that fall under existing speedy deletion criteria — should be listed at FfD (because unilaterally determining that one has "no foreseeable use elsewhere" falls outside an administrator's purview). —David Levy 06:30, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose, for the reason noted above. For detailed discussion, please see the archived threads:
  • Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 31#New "i12"?
  • Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 32#G6 G8 - proposal from "archive"
  • Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 32#Today's change to G8 to include images without a "parent page" (comprising multiple subsections)

—David Levy 06:30, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

• We'd need something like this for files that are only referenced from out of project scope userpages and user subpages. MfD is showing just a tip of the iceberg of "create account, spam some ramdom content to userspace, abandon account" cruft. This and all associated images should be speedy deletable. Those cases are obvious enough for single admin to decide that there is "no foreseeable use elsewhere", based on 1) lack of encyclopedic purpose 2) referenced only from user namespace 3) abandoned X time ago 4) lack of contributions by creator. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 06:45, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

  Can you please cite some examples?
  As discussed in 2009, "lack of encyclopedic purpose" is the type of determination made at FfD, not one unilaterally imposed by random admins. Additionally, some images lacking encyclopedic purposes are suitable for use at other Wikimedia Foundation projects.
  I don't see how the other three conditions are relevant. Even an orphaned file is potentially useful, irrespective of how long ago and by whom it was uploaded. —David Levy 07:14, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

  Almost every nomination to MfD in these days is a WP:FAKEARTICLE by a hit-and-run userpage creator. See for example User:Pilar_Scratch, which is a good example of this kind of self-promotional misuse of userspace, and this one includes an image that would fall under promosed F12 if userpage would be deleted by proposed U4 (few versions of this above in this page). Promotional userpages of non-contributors are trivial to detect by any admin with low probability of error, the "discussion" of 1-2 participants in MfD is simply extra busywork. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 14:24, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

  That's not a very good example Jni since there are RS for Pilar Scratch and she may indeed meet the threshold for a stub article (as noted on the MfD). — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 14:38, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

  Okey not best possible example, but see the MfD listing for several that are in far worse shape, i.e. completely unsalvageable, than this one. WP:NOTWEBHOST userpages with images are not that common as large unwikified textdumps or spam in userpage, so the utility of proposed F12 for this type of cleanup is somewhat limited. Support this anyway. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 14:56, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

  That actually makes a key example of why these images shouldn't be deleted. That was an article you, and a few others thought was just crap promotional stuff in user space. Had you not used it as an example here, I wouldn't have gone and looked at the MfD and done a search on Google with my "-personalInfo" macro (which expands to "-facebook.com -myspace.com -twitter.com -linkedin.com -pinterest.com\n"). I wouldn't have then seen on the first page of results that this person has been written about in a magazine, and commented as such on the MfD as keep. The article would have been deleted, the image would have been deleted (and may qualify for deletion as a copyvio anyway as I actually haven't looked into that, may also qualify for deletion as a non-free orphan in 7-days if it is not used in article space and non-free and that usage on that user page might need to be cleaned for NFCC#9). Instead, there may now be a new article (yeah it needs some "cleanup") with an image. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 15:19, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

  Indeed, the above exchange illustrates the importance of community review.
  When this was discussed five years ago, the proposer provided the hypothetical example of parents creating an article about their three-year-old child. As I noted, if the image is of high quality and is suitably licensed, it might be a fine addition to Toddler (or another relevant article, perhaps about the activity depicted, type of clothing worn, etc.). Such observations can be made at FfD, but not if a random admin unilaterally decides that an image has "no foreseeable use" and deletes it. —David Levy 22:06, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

  I still think Pillar Scratch has zero chance of survival in AfD. Notability is about importance and being interviewed for a single magazine article does not quite make someone notable. I don't know what our notability guidelines for celebrity wardrobe stylists are, but AfD deletes far more well sourced people like for example professors who have published tens of papers and cited by hundreds of their peers. Rest of search results are typical blogospehere content like [5] that has zero information content, it is just a short profile of a random twitter user. We should automatically delete the userpages of all non-contributors after, say, six months of inactivity in order to reduce spam, copyvios, promotional autobios even if we occasionally could salvage few articles from there. Salvaging content from a can full of crap can be delayed to undeletion process, there is simply no need to keep the garbage can open forever, just in hope someone someday finds something marginally valuable from it. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 07:41, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

  I still think Pillar Scratch has zero chance of survival in AfD. Notability is about importance and being interviewed for a single magazine article does not quite make someone notable.
  Whether Pillar Scratch is sufficiently notable is beside the point. Either way, the matter clearly warranted discussion. And even if a person is non-notable, that doesn't mean that a free photograph of him/her has no foreseeable use in some other context (as discussed above). Again, this is for the community — not a random admin — to determine.
  We should automatically delete the userpages of all non-contributors after, say, six months of inactivity in order to reduce spam, copyvios, promotional autobios even if we occasionally could salvage few articles from there. Salvaging content from a can full of crap can be delayed to undeletion process, there is simply no need to keep the garbage can open forever, just in hope someone someday finds something marginally valuable from it.
  That's the type of attitude that alienates new editors and other non-admins (who are unable to view deleted content, I'll remind you).
  The current deletion processes handle "spam, copyvios, and promotional autobios" appropriately. There's no need to "delete the userpages of all non-contributors" (however you define them) after x months of inactivity. If there's one thing that's less constructive than misusing Wikipedia as a Web host, it's driving away good-faith users by indiscriminately labeling their pages "crap"/"garbage" and deleting them because arbitrary activity quotas weren't met. —David Levy 14:02, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

  My latter policy proposal comment was about non-contributors, not about activity quotes imposed for normal editors. I would oppose strict restrictions based on inactivity for any users who have done some minimal level of good contributions to encyclopedia. (I was once desysopped in one small wiki because they decided to impose inactivity policy when I was absent for half a year or so. Have not contributed there ever since.) Could you please tell me why stuff like User:BHUPENDRA MAHIRAS or User:Ismaelchoudhury or User:BrarHarjeet (this one has a proposed-F12-deletable image. It is actually in Commons and nominated for deletion there, but you should see the point about the applicability of F12 nevertheless.) or thousands of abandoned userspace pages of "create account just to put some crap to WP" non-editors just like those need deletion discussion in MfD? There are about 50 open discussions in MfD right now about userpages for users who have zero good edits ever, and there are many many more fake articles undetected. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 15:49, 23 February 2014 (UTC)+tweaks

  My latter policy proposal comment was about non-contributors, not about activity quotes imposed for normal editors.
  Yes, I understand. And the problem is that you seek to draw such a distinction and punish "non-contributors" for their failure to be "normal editors".
  Under your proposal, someone who creates a harmless user page ("Hello, Wiki! My name is Terry and I'm interested in politics and tennis. Thanks for creating this website!") and returns six months later with the intent to begin editing will find that his/her page has been deleted, seemingly implying that he/she did something wrong and is unwelcome. How, in your view, would this benefit Wikipedia?
  Regarding the examples that you've cited, perhaps a speedy deletion criterion applicable to that specific type of material is feasible. (This is very different from indiscriminately deleting user pages belonging to "non-contributors" after an arbitrary duration.) If not, I see no evidence that MfD will implode. Holding fifty deletion discussions is preferable to accidentally deleting one valid page because the community wasn't consulted. —David Levy 20:26, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose Orphaned fair-use images should be marked {{subst:orfud}} (see WP:CSD#F5); orphaned free-use images may be sent to WP:FFD. Either way, deletion does not occur for seven days minimum. Some orphaned free-use images may instead be transferred to Commons but please check the licensing first: a few licenses considered acceptable at English Wikipedia for free-use images are not accepted at Commons. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:27, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. Articles deleted under A7 may be, and often are, recreated with a proper assertion of significance, or even evidence of notability. Articles deleted under G11 are sometimes recreated with a proper encyclopedic tone, and prove to be about notable subjects. Particularly in the A7 case it is not uncommon to restore the deleted source and move it to a userspace draft, or to AfC space, so that the creator can edit to make it ready for mainspace. in such a case, an image, if free, can and should remain in the draft, which it won't if it is deleted. Non-free images will probably be deleted in 7 days if not used elsewhere, but a motivated submitter can often have a draft ready for mainspace in 7 days. I see no significant gain from this proposed criterion, and in some cases significant harm. DES ^(talk) 21:39, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose Seven days is speedy enough for orphaned non-free images. I agree with DES in almost every respect. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:37, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose more or less per the arguments of DES and David Levy. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 20:32, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose Unfree files in deleted articles may sometimes be speedily deleted immediately per WP:CSD#F5. In other cases, or if the administrator forgets to delete the file, it will soon be tagged for speedy deletion per WP:CSD#F5 7 days after tagging, giving the same outcome. Free files are better handled at WP:FFD, in case someone finds some other use for them somewhere. It would be nice to have a report of free files which become orphaned this way, though. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:06, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose as inherently impossible to determine and verify applicability. ✄ (talk) 13:12, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Clarification of G4

G4 currently says, A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title.... It's unclear how liberally having any title should be interpreted. There's a deletion review going on now, which involved the latest in a series of articles related to the 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and now 2014 Olympics, all of which have been deleted by AfD. In Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2004 Summer Olympics Medals Earned Per Capita, the AfD proposer stated, Strictly speaking, this is not a WP:CSD#G4 situation as this current nomination is for the 2004 and 2006 Games, whereas the previously deleted articles were for 1996 and 2000. I think he was being overly conservative in his interpretation of G4 applicability. Hopefully, we can get some guidance on this, so we can streamline the handling of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2020 Olympics Medals Earned Per Capita. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:16, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that you can qualify the 2020/2016 per capita medals as G4 (what if sorting medals per capita becomes all the rage in 2020?). The any title qualifier is used, for example, for the same person under a real name or a stage name. Different years are entirely different subjects (to some degree). You may wish to include the medals in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 18:26, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

• Yes I agree that CSD:G4 does not apply here. Those are different topics. What is specific to 1996 does not apply to 2014. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 18:43, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
• If you replaced 'per capita' by 'by number of athletes', that would be a different title, but the same topic. That could be a G4. A different year will obviously have different content and not be the same article. Peridon (talk) 11:00, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Deletion of template

Hi. I'm not sure where to take this. The creator of an article twice in quick succession removed the speedy template -- despite being told that he cannot, as creator. After the second restore, an IP did precisely what the creator did -- removed the template, here. He is from the same country as the creator says he is from. And he did this with his first edits, ever. What to do?--Epeefleche (talk) 20:06, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah... no matter how they stack it, it's an "All Rights Reserved" copyright on the infringed site. I've restored the CSD banner and warned that non-admin removal of the CSD banner could be vandalism as Copyright is one of the bright line violations and it appears the advocates don't know the rules of wiki. Hasteur (talk) 20:14, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Epeefleche I have deleted the article, however if it happens again you can report the removal as vandalism (as Hasteur referred) WP:AIV, it will likely get more prompt attention than it would at being tagged for speedy deletion.--kelapstick^(bainuu) 20:22, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks to both of you.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:27, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

@Epeefleche: We have warning templates specific to this. The series starts at {{uw-speedy1}} and escalates at higher numbers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:48, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Clarified F5. Can I apply it on the spot?

Added "This includes previous revisions of the image" after the lack of this confused me on application of a {{non-free reduced}}. When I reduce a nonfree image's resolution, can I reasonably apply F5 on the spot? - David Gerard (talk) 20:09, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I read that change, and your post above, and I still have absolutely no idea what you mean. VanIsaac_WS^cont 20:19, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry :-) Non-free images where there's a previous revision that's been replaced, typically a reduction in resolution per {{non-free reduced}}. e.g. File:1st Step to Heaven LP sleeve.jpg - I uploaded it at 600x600, a bot reduced it to 300x300, someone tagged it with {{non-free reduced}} and someone deleted the large revision under F5 (which is why the list of versions appears to show a bot upload, although it was originally me). When I saw the tag had been placed on it, I couldn't see in CSD which provision allowed for this (though I completely agree with the idea), so I thought an explanation should be added for anyone confused as I was. Evidently I need a better phrasing for what I'm talking about - David Gerard (talk) 20:53, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of redirects

Nothing to do with rights and wrongs. This is a practical matter, not content. Having two cases of this yesterday, I thought I'd bring it here. If a redirect is tagged for speedy, and the tag is manually placed below the redirect, the title displays in CAT:CSD in italics. When you click it, you get taken to the target, and think that someone's made a redirect out of a duplicate or moved something - and done it recently so it's still in the version of the list you are using. Twinkle puts CSD tags at the top of pages, so there's no problem there. Moving the tag to the top changes the italics to normal, and overrides the redirect. Not something that happens every day, but someone may have an idea about it, and anyone who hasn't met it may now know how to sort it... Peridon (talk) 10:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I guess a bot could fix these. Is it that important, though? The category is still applied normally, and the nominated redirects are still reachable. Keφr 10:53, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

When I first found this, I assumed that someone had fixed a problem BY redirecting or moving, not that the problem WAS the redirect. I'm also interested to know why the addition of a CSD tag in the wrong place causes italics in the list entry - but lets the redirect work as usual. Peridon (talk) 10:59, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

By the same principle WP:RCATLIST templates work. Keφr 11:08, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Bearing in mind that I don't understand that page anyway, I can't find italics mentioned in there. Peridon (talk) 12:50, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Any redirect that is categorised shows in italics in the category page, it doesn't matter how the categorisation is done. See for example Category:Disused railway stations in Somerset which has 85 entries, of which 25 are italicised and therefore redirects. A page can only be a redirect if the #REDIRECT [[]] appears at the start of the very first line. If something is placed before that code, the redirect is broken, and the page no longer shows italicised in cat pages. A CSD template by contrast works just the same wherever it is placed on the page. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:48, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks - I'd worked out that REDIRECT must be at the start, but not the italics. I can't say how many of these I've dealt with at CSD, and I can't see why some people put CSD tags in places other than the top of the page, but it happens and is a bit of a nuisance when it does. Probably the only way round it is rearranging and then telling the tagger. Peridon (talk) 11:16, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Articles about the Wikipedia user

It appears that when a Wikipedia user writes an article about him/herself, that does not trigger the speedy deletion process. Am I reading the policy correctly? Jc3s5h (talk) 01:49, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

There's no criterion specifically for this, but in practice, A7 almost always applies. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:51, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The article that made me wonder, Shahrdad G Sajjadi‎, if taken at face value, would be about an academic person who might be notable, so A7 wouldn't apply. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

• As long as the person is truely notable and the article somewhat resembles a NPOV, why should it be deleted just because it is an autobio? I usually suggest those editors that wish to write such an article do so using the WIZARD and submit it for review to AfC. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 02:04, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not suggesting a change in the policy, I just wanted to make sure I was reading it correctly. The reason it crossed my mind that autobiographies might qualify for speedy deletion was that there might be many of them, and there might be a need to deal with them expediently. But if the community hasn't experienced a flood of autobiographies and wishes to deal with them in a more leisurely way, that's OK with me. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:13, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The Magic Firehose of Sewage is much more heavily laden with promotional articles by paid spammers and by flacks of various kinds, than with autobiographies. --Orange Mike | Talk 02:16, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

COI, in and of itself, is NOT a reason for deletion. That particular article deserved deletion not because the author was the subject, but because there was no credible assertion of notability. Most autobios that are speedied get the ax because they are hopelessly promotional; or, as Jack said, because they make no credible assertion of notability. --Orange Mike | Talk 02:14, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Mike - quite a few of the autobios are total crap that even the most dedicated inclusionist would reject as being hopeless cases even for the distant future. Others are highly promo and come under that anyway, others are copyvios from the subject's Facebook, IMDb or work-related site, others still are just very low significance like lower level tax collectors or engineering students (to mention two classes that come up quite often - usually from India for some reason). Autobios are discouraged, mainly because of ownership problems, COI, and tendencies to promo. But, if they're notable, encyclopaedic, and behaving themselves properly, who's to know? Peridon (talk) 10:54, 1 April 2014 (UTC)