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WP:NEWCSD

Contributors frequently propose new (or expansions of existing) criteria for speedy deletion. Please bear in mind that CSD criteria require careful wording, and in particular, need to be

Objective: Most reasonable people should be able to agree whether a page meets the criterion. Often this requires making the criterion very specific.
Uncontestable: It must be the case that almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion. Remember that a rule may be used in a way you don't expect, unless you word it carefully.
Frequent: Speedy deletion is intended primarily as a means of reducing load on other deletion methods such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. These processes are more discriminating because they treat articles case-by-case, and involve many points of view; CSD sacrifices these advantages in favor of speed and efficiency. If a situation arises only rarely, it's probably easier, simpler, and fairer to delete it with one of the other methods instead. This also keeps CSD as simple and easy to remember as possible, and avoids instruction creep.
Nonredundant: If the deletion can be accomplished using a reasonable interpretation of an existing rule, just use that. If this application of that rule is contested, consider discussing and/or clarifying it. New rules should be proposed only to cover situations that cannot be speedily deleted otherwise.

If you do have a proposal that you believe passes these guidelines, please feel free to propose it on this discussion page. Be prepared to offer evidence of these points and to refine your criterion if necessary. Consider explaining how it meets these criteria when you propose it. Do not, on the other hand, add it unilaterally to the CSD page.

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R3 and page moves

Redirects after page moves are routinely kept in WP:RFD, and this criterion becomes frequently used to nominate for speedy deletion the redirects created after moving pages from WP:MOS-incompatible names. Thus I propose to change the phrase "This criterion also applies to redirects created as a result of a page move of pages recently created at an implausible title" to "This criterion does not apply to redirects created as a result of a page move of pages recently created at an implausible title" in order to send all these redirects to WP:RFD for proper discussion. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:30, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The reason that it applies to recently created pages that were moved is because a startling number of articles are created at absolutely hideous titles. Two such examples in my move log are BANURI VILLAGE (HIMACHAL PRADESH) and Dr. David A. Geller, MD, FACS (these are demonstrative, not exhaustive). Another is Who was the first lady judge of punjab and haryana high court at chandingarh (the page it was moved to was BLPPRODded, but could potentially become an article at some point). In all three cases, articles were created at those titles and someone had to move them to something reasonable; none of those are even remotely helpful (and the last one is even at WP:DAFT). Even beyond those, there are plenty of instances where articles are created with quotes in the title, with some sort of weird typo (I remember one which had w0hen instead of when), with foreign language and Latin characters put together, or missing a space between a letter and parenthesis; those are routinely deleted per R3, and a quick glance at my move log from when I was on the non-admin side of NPP will give you plenty of examples. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:54, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Unfortunately, I have just as many examples of bad R3 nominations (many of which are not being properly vetted by the deleting admins). For example, the current wording is incorrectly baiting editors to tag and delete a redirect under R3 because the redirect was "recently created" by the pagemove process despite the content having existed at the old title for several years. And while I agree with the implausibility of most of your examples, we have debated and kept several meeting your descriptions if they were not harmful - typos that appear implausible to you (and sometimes to me) turn out to be entirely plausible to users of alternate keyboards, for example.
If the R3 criterion had been proposed today, I seriously doubt that it would be approved. The term "implausible" is too open to interpretation and is not leading to nominations in which "most reasonable people should be able to agree whether an article meets the criterion." Rossami (talk) 22:23, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that R3 is frequently misapplied. Maybe we can make it clearer. Would it help to expand the criteria with something like "does not apply to redirects created when established articles are moved"? - Eureka Lott 22:44, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Don't think so. If the title is really implausible, it can be nominated for WP:RFD and will easily pass away in 7 days. In cases of WP:RM such decisions are even easier to make as the RM discussion already reveals some of the arguments. The problem is that we can't control bogus R3 application cases, so it is by far easier to send everyone to WP:RFD then picking a clear wording and watching its usage. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 08:54, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As one of the normal RM closers, I will say that I don't always remove unlikely redirect pages. There is enough work fixing templates, and not free files and other cleanup. Also the inbound links can take a while to clear so at the time of close it is difficult to determine if the redirect should remain. So a review after allowing a day or more for cleanup would seem reasonable. But a default keep of all of these does not seem reasonable. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:21, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see three legitimate uses for R3 after page moves:

If the page was moved to the wrong title accidently (for example, Wikipedia:Social Media and Television).
Viable articles recently created under extremely bad titles (examples given above)
Meaningless filenames (for example, File:H65446wecdp.jpg).

Examples of R3 being misapplied are easy to find, see for example the logs of Iraqi revolt against the British, Misinformation and rumors about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Lamina emergent mechanisms (LEMs). Clearly some admins are ignoring the "recently created" clause completely. Yoenit (talk) 09:40, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that the criterion is being misapplied wildly, and even some of the examples you draw above may be worth keeping under certain circumstances (off-site linking, establish use patterns, etc.). Effectively there is no proper way to decide on whether such redirect should be deleted or kept without having the clean at least month-long stats. Given the ease of misapplication of criterion, I still think that forbidding the speedy deletion of the redirects after move is the best solution. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:24, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

redirects are cheap and it is very difficult to identify redirects which no-one is going to find useful. Obviously redirects to pages deleted on notability grounds can go, and redirects where the creator made a typo and is asking for it to be cleaned up. But many redirects are deleted quite unnecessarily. There is also the problem that many redirects result from people correcting newbie errors, and if such redirects go then the newbies my think their creation has been deleted rather than merely renamed. Ϣere SpielChequers 14:36, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Given the number of times that CSD#R3 is properly applied compared to the number of times that it is mis-applied on any given day, I would rather see the criterion deprecated altogether. The increased load to RfD would be manageable. Failing that, I think we need much clearer wording such as

R3. Implausible typos
Recently created redirects from implausible typos or misnomers. Implausible redirects are ones that no reasonable, good-faith editor would knowingly create or support. Redirects from apple to orange or from profanity to US President are implausible. Redirects from common misspellings or misnomers, some redirects in other languages, redirects ending with "(disambiguation)" that point to a disambiguation page or redirects which bring a pagetitle into compliance with the Manual of Style, on the other hand, are are not implausible. This criterion may also apply to redirects created as a result of a pagemove but only if the moved page was itself recently created at the implausible title. "Recently created" is measured from the creation of the title and is generally understood to be the last few hours or days at most. Pages with history (articles or stubs that have been converted into redirects) are ineligible for this criterion.

It's a lot longer than I'd like it to be and deprecation would be easier but I think that wording would clear up the worst of the confusion. Rossami (talk) 02:21, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't oppose such explanation. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 06:39, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any objections to the proposed rewrite? Rossami (talk) 21:53, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the "Redirects from apple to orange or from profanity to US President are implausible" sentence is needed. I.E. it doesn't clear anything up (and indeed those examples could be considered vandalism). Thus, I suggest dropping it.--ThaddeusB (talk) 23:22, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As I said above, I think that R3 should be changed, but your proposed wording probably is too inflexible. An example: Fausto Carmona yesterday was moved to Roberto Hernández (baseball, born 1980). The editor making the move at first accidentally moved the article to Roberto Hernández (baseball born 1983), but rectified his mistake within a minute. I deleted the misleading redirect under R3, and it existed for less than half an hour. We need to retain some flexibility for administrators. - Eureka Lott 23:24, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I do not think that the proposed wording gets in the way of situations like Roberto Hernández (baseball born 1983). As you note, content was only at that title for one minute and the title was deleted in less than 20 minutes. That clearly meets the definition for "recently created". The point of the clarification of the recently-created clause is to make clear that it's about titles, not about content.
That example also met even the strictest definitions of implausibility - the clearest evidence is that the page mover identified and immediately self-corrected the move. It's not the vandalism of profanity to US President but it is the self-evidently different content of apple to orange. I say self-evidently because his correct birthyear was shown in the article. Had the birthyear in the moved title been correct, it would have had to be a different person.
But maybe I'm missing something. What interpretation do you see that would get in the way of deleting that particular example? Rossami (talk) 04:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your proposed change says that it "may also apply to redirects created as a result of a pagemove but only if the moved page was itself recently created at the implausible title." Even though it only existed at the deleted title for one minute, the article was created in 2005. Under a strict interpretation of your wording, the page would be ineligible for speedy deletion. - Eureka Lott 13:54, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How about "but only if the moved page was itself recently created at or moved to the implausible title". Yoenit (talk) 15:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see the problem now. Yoenit's fix seems to resolve it. Thanks. Rossami (talk) 15:25, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why are schools exempt from speedy deletion?

From time to time I come across articles about schools that are clear copyvio or a clear advertisement. Still they can't be speedy deleted? Why is this? Night of the Big Wind _talk 12:04, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thats not the case. Schools are exempt from speedy deletion criteria A7, if they meet other criteria they can be deleted under that, especially if its a copyvio--Jac16888 ^Talk 12:08, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Almost all my speedy deletion requests regarding schools are turned down, even whit other criteria as reason. Effectively, they are protected for speedy deletion.

But it still leaves the question, why are they exempt from A7? Night of the Big Wind _talk 12:19, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well then the editors who declined those speedy deletions were incorrect, if there are any copyvios that weren't deleted I suggest you retag them rightaway. As for A7, have a look throught the archives of this page, [1]--Jac16888 ^Talk 12:29, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A quick look echoes the opinion of Wikiproject Schools, who desperately try to protect school articles from deletion, no matter how bad and unsourced the articles are. Still, it makes no sense to exempt school articles from A7. A statement as "The idea is that simply being a school is good enough to no longer make A7" sends me the shivers over my back. Night of the Big Wind _talk 12:36, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect this has been discussed many times before, but you're free to bring it up at WP:VPR to get it changed--Jac16888 ^Talk 12:44, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Night of the Big Wind. You may be approaching this from the wrong angle. Remember deletion is not for articles that can be improved by normal editing. If your concern is with articles being kept "no matter how bad and unsourced the articles are", you need to try sourcing them. Those that you can source will no longer be unsourced, those which you can't find sourcing for can be uncontentiously deleted by prods. Ϣere SpielChequers 00:00, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The reason schools are exempted from A7 (though not the others) is simply that the community remains conflicted on whether schools are inherently notable. If you look at the guidelines at the top of this page, you'll see the admonition that a "it must be the case that almost all articles that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus." When school articles are proposed to AfD on the grounds of notability, they are sometimes deleted and sometimes not depending on circumstances. That diversity of result says that we can not rely upon the rule for a speedy-deletion criterion. Personally, I agree with you that schools should be held to the same standards as any other organization. The community has not yet reached consensus on that point, though. Rossami (talk) 13:24, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is another reason. Usual practice in the case of non-notable schools is to merge and redirect to the article on the school district or the place where the school is located rather than just deleting the article. The speedy deletion process can't do this. Hut 8.5 13:27, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The points of Common Outcomes and "inherently notable" are under fire by now. I am just trying to close an RfC on WP:VPP, dealin with the notability of school. Very frustrating, because the nay-sayers only showed up at the point that we had the idea something serious could be achieved. Your comments make one thing clear: without a breakthrough on the notability guidelines, no change in the A7-policy is on the cards. Strange, because I always had the idea that guidelines would be set by the community, not by a single project. Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

CSD should not be used for anything that has even a slight chance at being notable, schools or otherwise (barring, of course, that other CSD criteria don't apply).

The logic, however, is that if there can be a change to affect the notability of schools elsewhere (basically removing the OUTCOMES bit), then I would suspect that this must necessitate the change here at A7, since the exemption right now points back to OUTCOMES. --MASEM (t) 14:02, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

NOBW does have a point. As the rules are currently written I could build a shack in my brother's back yard, call it "The Ritzman School of Hard Knocks", write an article about it and it wouldn't be subject to A7. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 19:12, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Situations as blatant as that one are the reason why we have IAR. (In fact if you were to write an article about this shack which did not claim it was an organisation it wouldn't be subject to A7 anyway.) Hut 8.5 23:11, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would think that the above example is G3-able. →Σ τ c. 00:29, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Even without IAR, in the most extreme cases, the article can and sometimes has been deleted for no encyclopedic information, or lack of context if we cannot tell where the school even is. And many of the weakest articles are good G12 copyvios. I am perhaps the most inclusive admin on schools, but I delete in those sort of situations. DGG ( talk ) 07:56, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Books. Again.

Yes, I've read the archives, and I understand the arguments for keeping books out of A7 and/or A9 (basically, it's harder to tell from a book stub whether or not notability is met, so we give them the benefit of the doubt - which is sensible). However, I propose that we consider creating a new criterion, or adding to an existing one, to allow the deletion of self-published books with no claim to notability. With the ready availability of ebook publishing through such services as CreateSpace, literally anyone can publish a book and make it available on Amazon or elsewhere. The growing popularity of these and similar services for print (such as Lulu and XLibris) mean that more and more fledgeling authors are looking to promote their work online; Wikipedia seems to be a popular place to do this. A few self-published books are notable and get articles; however, the vast majority get taken to AfD and deleted under WP:NBOOK (usually after having had a PROD tag removed by the page author).

Having a speedy deletion criterion for self-published titles with no claim of notability would reduce the workload at AfD whilst avoiding books that have been published by actual publishing houses (which, even if sources aren't readily apparent, are at least likely to have been given marketing support and had review copies sent out, meaning sources may exist). Checking whether a book is self-published or not is the work of moments via Googlebooks or Amazon. I would suggest exceptions for titles which have a claim to notability in their text (similar to A7); books self-published by notable authors, or that claim to have generated controversy or other newsworthy attention would not be covered.

If there is support for this, I'd be happy to draft text for the criterion. Thoughts? Yunshui 雲‍水 15:09, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Most of time it is not obvious whether a book is self-published or not, so we would need to maintain a list of self-publishing publishers as well, which seems a bad idea for a speedy deletion criteria. Secondly, I am not convinced we really have that many articles on selfpublished E-books. Could you link to some recent AFD's for such books? Yoenit (talk) 16:02, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here are a few I found through searching:

I'll grant that it isn't always easy to establish whether a book is self-published or not (being in the book trade does give me an advantage in terms of personal knowledge), but aside from setting up a personal publsihing company, there are really only a few major places to go: Createspace, Lulu, Authorhouse and XLibris are far and away the most common, so the proposed guideline could be made to cover just these four. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If this goes through, add Gyan to that list; we run into that a lot in Indian articles, especially on castes. Besides being self-published, they tend to be copyvios of other self-published works as well. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:09, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's quite a list. But the first is from 2009 and the second from 2008. If you need to go that far back to compile such a list then I'm not convinced this is a common enough occurrence for such a complex addition to speedy deletion. A once a month scenario where we get a clear decision to delete, belongs at AFD not CSD, AFD can easily handle a deletion a month where the article is on a self published book. Its not as if these are going to be contentious AFDs, or that anyone will be paying spammers to market such books. Also notability is an AFD matter, not something that should be decided at speedy deletion. Ϣere SpielChequers 22:26, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that. Rather than go back through AfDs day-by-day and entry-by-entry (which was the only other way I could think of to compile such a list of specific AfDs) I just ran searches on "~Lulu" and "~CreateSpace" in Wikiproject space. Foolishly, I made the assumption that results would appear in date order, so didn't check the dates; evidently they do not. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:25, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. If these were easy to identify and there'd been this sort of number in the last two or three months (or to make things easier half a dozen in the last fortnight) then I'd be more willing to be convinced that this is frequent enough to be worthwhile. But speedy deletion is already very complex, and for it to be worth making it more complex we need a small rule change that prevents a lot of clearcut AFDs. Ϣere SpielChequers 11:29, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have always opposed adding an equivalent of A9 for books, but i think self published books might be an exception. I think the number of these submitted here is very likely to increase, and is already enough that a criterion would be useful. I would make the criterion Self published or by a vanity publisher, by an author who does not have a Wikipedia article, none of whose books have ever been published by a conventional publisher, & where there are no references to reliable sources for independent reviews. The only case I can imagine of such an article being kept is where there are in fact reviews, but the author of the article is not aware of them. This is often the case for naïve articles on childrens' books and the like, written by children who do not know to look for reviews, but will not be the case for a vanity publication. In this connection, when using A7 on an author, the assertion that someone has published a book is a reason for possible importance that defeats speedy, except where the book is self published. When the only book or books are self published I always use A7, & I cannot remember any such deletion being successfully challenged. As the book is likely to be even less notable than the author, I think this criterion is a safe one. DGG ( talk ) 07:53, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Add NOINDEX to all speedy templates

I wouldlike to see __NOINDEX__ added to all of the speedy templates. Google, and maybe other search engines as well, are quick off the mark at finding a new WP article. I have seen them turn up in google search results within minutes. Adding __NOINDEX__ to speedy templates means that visitors who come via search engine links will not see half-baked articles and often outright rubbish. Article marked with a speedy deletion tag can sometimes hang around long enough to be chanced upon. Once the speedy tag is removed the article is then visible to search engines. Sounds like a nice idea to me... -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:20, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a decent idea. (Though I'm open to other perspectives on this.) I think Template:Under construction might be another one for this. - jc37 01:04, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I proposed this some time back and it was explained to me, here, that the NOINDEX function is disabled in the mainspace so we can add it all we want but it won't function. It's possible the technical barrier has been removed, but I thought I'd provide the benefit of past discussion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:58, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like that barrier is removed. See Wikipedia:NOINDEX#Individual_pages_2. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:11, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This has already been done, on {{db-meta}}. →Σ τ c. 08:15, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Great, so why aren't articles with the speedy templates put in Category:Noindexed pages? Is the noindex done but not the categorising? Which is fine by me. As long as the articles don't get picked up by the search engines. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:36, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Noindex doesn't work in mainspace, as there are many ways malicious users could use it to screw around. There may be a way the devs can get it to only work in certain circumstances, but it doesn't now. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:58, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be uncomfortable with this, not least because if an article gets tagged G10 and blanked I would prefer that mirrors picked up the tagged version rather than kept the attack. My preference would be that all unpatrolled pages are noIndexed, yes that would require a change in policy to allow NoIndex in mainspace, but I think that would be a good change, and as long as we kept it to unpatrolled=noIndex then it would be hard to game. Ϣere SpielChequers 18:51, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of unpatrolled=noIndex. What happens after the 30 day limit on the patrolling? Does the unpatrolled status drop off (and therefore NoIndex)? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:14, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We've been discussing it in the context of the new tool being developed for newpage patrol. The idea is that either the 30 day limit would go or it would become 60 days. If the latter then logically they should cease to be noIndex at 60 days, we may not have spelled that one out, but if we haven't done that we'd have some mainspace articles that are noindex without anyone having a way to spot or change that. Related to the NoIndex until patrolled idea is that you would no longer patrol articles when you tagged them for deletion, tagged for deletion would become a third colour along with yellow and grey. So the attack pages and so forth wouldn't be picked up by search engines and mirrors during their time at cat:Speedy Ϣere SpielChequers 12:03, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Given the fact that the vast majority of valid CSDs are deleted within minutes, and we have no information or guarantees on how quickly a search engine may notice the removal of a no-index tag (If search engines take their time try try to reindex a page which have been explicitly marked to be not indexed, all you need to do is to CSD tag a popular page to remove it from the world), I don't see that this proposal is a net positive. henrik•talk 18:59, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sigh... More complications because WP is too easy to edit for the vandals, and the bad editors, and the good faith bad editors, and the mischievous students... -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:14, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The timing is pure serendipity I think but check it out: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/NOINDEX.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:02, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

AfD redirects and G4

Please leave in the note that redirects are not deletions. This point is often confused. Jehochman ^Talk 21:26, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. It's not overkill to clarify something that editors are "getting wrong" on a regular basis. Jclemens (talk) 22:29, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

[G4] also excludes content which was redirected or merged after a deletion discussion, undeleted via deletion review, or.... I thought that if the article was redirected, then it is no longer "sufficiently identical" to the revision that was taken to AfD, and thus not able to be deleted as G4. →Σ τ c. 23:14, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This edit seems to stem from WP:Articles for deletion/The Shrike (2nd nomination). The previous AfD WP:Articles for deletion/The Shrike was closed as redirect without deletion. Flatscan (talk) 05:09, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That is not necessarily the case: delete and redirect is both a deletion and a redirect. I know that there's disagreement over whether deletion should be used before redirecting, but that is a separate issue. I think the addition is redundant to the base criterion, "deleted per a deletion discussion." Flatscan (talk) 05:09, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion before redirection as an AfD outcome serves one of two purposes:

1) If the content is unacceptable and shouldn't remain accessible to non-admins (BLP, copyvio, promotion, attack), then deletion is protective.

2) Otherwise, it's simply a way of preventing non-admin editors access to not-currently-meeting-standards content. If the issue is people keep undoing the redirection, that's what (semi-) protection of the redirect page is for.

Needless to say, I think option 2 is far more common than 1, and redireciton without deletion is more appropriate in those cases. When I saw old, previously deleted yet inoffensive redirects like that, I used to go through and restore the history under the redirect, just in case someone feels like sourcing and expanding the content. Haven't done it in a while, but would be happy to do so on request... Jclemens (talk) 07:05, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We discussed a piece of this issue at User talk:Flatscan/RfC draft: Restoring to merge after deletion at AfD. If you would like to deprecate delete and redirect except in those limited cases and permit unilateral restoration under redirects, I can dust off the draft for consideration at WT:Articles for deletion. Both deletions and restorations under redirects are being done, as of a few months ago. Flatscan (talk) 05:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How often is G4 incorrectly invoked for an AfD closed as redirect or merge? I agree that users conflating discrete outcomes is disappointingly widespread, but I don't see it as specific to G4. I suggest publicizing WP:Guide to deletion#Recommendations and outcomes. Flatscan (talk) 05:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing no responses, I reverted to the stable version. I am open to adding something like "merge, or redirect without deletion" to the existing footnote. Flatscan (talk) 05:03, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Question about G12

Criterion G12 says to delete:

"Text pages that contain copyrighted material with no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or a free license, where there is no non-infringing content on the page worth saving."

An article I created, X Lossless Decoder, which was a lightly edited version of this GFDL'd article, was speedily deleted (I didn't know GFDL content wasn't allowed, and still don't quite understand why it isn't, but that's a separate issue). So, unless GFDL is not considered a "free license", either the wording here needs to be changed or that wasn't a case for speedy deletion. Which? False vacuum (talk) 00:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The wording definitely needs changing. I'd agree that GFDL is a free license but we can't use material that is only licensed under it, or indeed several other free licenses. I'll go and boldy change it as it is clearly currently wrong. Dpmuk (talk) 02:08, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's an answer. And a very efficient edit, too. False vacuum (talk) 04:42, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For future reference, Dpmuk added a link to WP:Compatible license, which redirects to WP:FAQ/Copyright#Can I add something to Wikipedia that I got from somewhere else?. Flatscan (talk) 05:12, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

F9

Is there any reason why F9 exists as separate criteria and why it couldn't be unified with G12, and than F9 depracated? Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 15:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

uh... good question. They have a unified user warning ({{Nothanks-sd}}) and the textual differences are minor, so I don't see why not. The only problem is that the wall of text below G12 on this page will become even bigger. Yoenit (talk) 15:27, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It would seem that one of the original reasons for G12 was actually images (see the talk page "discussion" that led to this). It was later split per this discussion. I've got to say that I've often thought them redundant and indeed it has made me cautious about tagging things as F9 as I normally work in the text world so wasn't sure if there was some important difference I was missing that meant that F9 was a separate criteria. They also both placed content in CAT:CVSD. Dpmuk (talk) 18:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Image deletion & article deletions are different. and usually worked on by different admins. In particular Article G12s require a different set of judgments about whether there is non i fringing content of an opportunity for stubbification, none of which is present with images DGG ( talk ) 00:17, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

G12 and F9 already use the same speedy deletion category (Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as copyright violations), so I don't see how a merge would affect that in any way. Yoenit (talk) 13:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One of the primary reasons for the difference is the complexities of fair use rules which exist for files but not for non-file namespaces. We can host exclusively unfree content on a file page; this isn't the case for any other namespace (textual fair use is never its own page). We also have an entirely different licensing system for the two; text added to Wikipedia is automatically assumed to be GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0; files uploaded must be explicitly given a license and source - there are a number of different processes for handling incorrect licensing issues (in total, I count 10 different processes at C:SD, as well as WP:PUF and WP:FFD). That said, I entirely support deprecating F9 and merging it with G12, so long as we definitely keep F9's caveats intact. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification on F2

I think we need to clarify WP:CSD#F2. Currently it refers to "description" pages for Commons images, but clearly it doesn't refer to all description pages, as CSD#F8 clearly states that some content must be undeleted after first deletion. The question: does that refer to interwikis and categories? I see it happen a lot that a description page with just a category is listed for deletion under F2, but I don't know if it applies. We should state explicitly what is included and what isn't. Therefore I propose F2 should read as following:

F2. Corrupt or empty image.

Files that are corrupt, empty, or that contain superfluous and blatant non-metadata information.[8] This also includes image description pages for Commons images.

If it is a description page for a Commons file that consists entirely of categories and/or information not relevant to any other project (like {{FeaturedPicture}}), it should not be deleted.

I don't much care about whether or not categories is in the final version; I just would like some clarification. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:38, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification of A3

A3 includes, "Similarly, this criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria." I don't understand: if the page has only an infobox, how could it meet other criteria? And is that supposed to mean other A3 criteria or other non-A3 criteria? Please clarify. —teb728 t c 09:25, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think the point of this sentence is to say that an article which only consists of an infobox is not eligible for A3 just because it only consists of an infobox. People do sometimes nominate articles consisting of just an infobox for deletion under A3, even when the infobox contains meaningful substantitive content, because they think that the lack of non-infobox content makes the article eligible. Hut 8.5 11:00, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pages which have survived deletion discussions

This edit a few months ago sneaked through a significant change to the policy: instead of saying that a page which survived the most recent deletion discussion cannot be speedily deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations, it now says that such pages should not generally be deleted. The edit summary for the change says it was made as a result of this RfC, but this particular aspect of the change was not part of the proposed wording in that RfC (or even mentioned there) and it doesn't seem to have been discussed on this page. Speedy deletions are supposed to be uncontroversial, if a page has survived the most recent previous deletion discussion then its deletion is at least somewhat controversial and individual admins should not be allowed to overrule the community. I propose we change the lead back by removing the word "generally". (There is some related discussion here).) Hut 8.5 10:08, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree completely - having 'generally' there just invites abuse.--Michig (talk) 10:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Support: I see neither sense in this change nor consensus behind it. I wanted to start a discussion on actually setting a timeout that would discard the previous deletion discussions. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:22, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Support revert of change. I see no consensus for the addition of the word "generally", and we get enough abuse of CSD already without inviting more. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Support – Because there are few checks and balances on speedy deletions, CSD is one of the few areas of policy where the community has continuously supported tight, restrictive wording; throwing the word "generally" in there is not in keeping with that. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 11:17, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal of generally, and that the additional language added directly to G4 be changed to a footnote, as I originally suggested at the RFC, which appears to have been what was agreed to and expected by others.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:59, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 198: / Line 198: @@
 *'''Support''' revert of change. I see no consensus for the addition of the word "generally", and we get enough abuse of CSD already without inviting more. -- [[User:Boing! said Zebedee|Boing! said Zebedee]] ([[User talk:Boing! said Zebedee|talk]]) 11:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 *'''Support''' – Because there are few checks and balances on speedy deletions, CSD is one of the few areas of policy where the community has continuously supported tight, restrictive wording; throwing the word "generally" in there is not in keeping with that. <font face="Comic sans MS">[[User:Paul Erik|Paul Erik]]</font> <small><sup><font color="Blue">[[User_talk:Paul Erik|(talk)]]</font><font color="Green">[[Special:Contributions/Paul Erik|(contribs)]]</font></sup></small> 11:17, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
+* '''Support''' removal of generally, and that the additional language added directly to G4 be changed to a footnote, as I originally suggested at the RFC, which appears to have been what was agreed to and expected by others.--[[User:Fuhghettaboutit|Fuhghettaboutit]] ([[User talk:Fuhghettaboutit|talk]]) 11:59, 2 April 2012 (UTC)