Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion

New criterion - WP:NOT

It's fairly clear that whenever something falls under WP:NOT, the content will get deleted. Procedurally, we have a few possible options at the moment for dealing with articles that are not acceptable for Wikipedia- rewriting the article, making it into a redirect, or deleting it. These are exactly the same options that are available to anything that falls under WP:CSD, except for that last part. Instead of simply tagging an article that is not acceptable for Wikipedia for speedy deletion, we're forced to undergo a lengthy deletion process that involves PRODing it, having that PROD removed, and taking it to AfD where it endures a week of pointless discussion when we all know that it'll get deleted in the end. Sometimes I see editors try to squeeze by WP:NOT articles under G2, G1 or A1 when it's obviously not the case. Sometimes the articles get deleted under a valid CSD, like G11 or A7, but there are still many cases where those don't cover articles that should be deleted without question. It's pointless bureaucracy to force Wikipedians to waste their time on a full deletion discussion when an article should be immediately deleted. That is why i propose making the criteria under WP:NOT a criterion for speedy deletion. Please see below for the two specific proposals of A11 & A12.--Slon02 (talk) 19:43, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

For reference, a recent discussion about a similar proposal is at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 42#Create a new CSD - G:13 Unsalvageable WP:NOT Violations. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 19:59, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Based on that discussion, I've looked through the WP:NOT parts more individually. WP:NOT#ESSAY mostly falls under G11, as does WP:SOAP. WP:NOTLINK is related to A3. WP:CRYSTAL is often an A7. However, I still believe that WP:NOT#DICT and WP:NOTGUIDE frequently appear and have to go through the PROD/AfD process without any solid reason other than it being current policy. Naturally we'd need to make sure that the wording would only make the article apply to the cases where it would uncontroversially be deleted, just like our current CSD do. (ex. "Pages that are exclusively promotional, and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic.") That wording would eliminate the potential for abuse to the same extent that existing criteria can be abused, which I'd say is fairly low. --Slon02 (talk) 20:54, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

To be more specific, I'd like to start by proposing the following:
A11: Dictionary entries Articles that consist only of dictionary definitions of a word, idiom or term with no encyclopedic content. This excludes any articles that could be rewritten to become encyclopedic.

A12: Guides Articles that consist solely of instructions, advice, suggestions or recipes that would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic. --Slon02 (talk) 20:30, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

This has been proposed time and time again and every time it has correctly been rejected. Have you read the last discussions on this topic, like [1], [2], [3], [4] etc.? I honestly fail to see how those two proposals meet the four criteria at the top of this page any more than the previous proposals did... Regards SoWhy 21:16, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Of course I read those discussions. As for the four criteria at the top, it meets everyone one. I think that my proposals are specific enough to meet #1, although someone might suggest that they could be tighter. Seeing as those articles are not meant for Wikipedia per WP:NOT, and I specifically mentioned in the proposal that they either could not be rewritten (A11) or would need to be fundamentally rewritten (A12, same as G11 in wording), it meets #2. The frequency with which this discussion pops up is enough to show that #3 is fulfilled. #4 is fulfilled because I cited off the current parts of WP:NOT that are currently more or less covered by existing speey deletion criteria, leaving only these parts that are not. --Slon02 (talk) 21:36, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

As for A11, any criterion that uses "encyclopedic" in it is by definition too lose to be a speedy deletion criterion. We have 859 admins and that means that we have 859 different opinions as to what constitutes "encyclopedic" content and what does not. So your proposed A11 fails #1 because there is no clear definition of "encyclopedic". As for A12, the line between instructions and covering a subject is a fine line indeed and often content can be both instructing and covering a subject. Leaving this to the judgment of administrators poses the risk of articles being treated differently based on the reviewing administrator's familiarity with the subject, their language skills, their definition of "instructing" etc. Again, that's imho not "objective". As for #3, just claiming that it's frequent is not sufficient. I would very much like to see some actual statistics about how often those appear in PROD / at AFD. For example, I cannot find a single article in today's AFD log that was nominated for being a dictionary definition or a instructions-only article. Unless there are some statistics proving that it's really frequent, I think we should assume that PROD/AFD can handle it. Regards SoWhy 21:51, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I just did a little searching to find some data. Out of 75 current PRODs (picked randomly), 2 were for WP:NOT#DICDEF, 2 were for WP:NEO and 1 was for WP:GUIDE. That's almost 7% of all current PRODs, which is significant given that I'd say about 80% deal with notability. I also looked through all AfDs from June 16-22. A total of 282 articles were deleted- for WP:NOT#DICDEF, 1 for WP:NOTGUIDE, 2 for WP:NEO and 3 for both WP:NEO and WP:NOT#DICDEF. That's 3% of all articles deleted at AfD at that time, and I think that it's quite significant. The AfD articles that I found were Quintain(5lines), Blogma, Chunav, Ping-ponging, Portioned learning, Lol@souffs, Tompion (bear hibernation), Bought in, Year of entrance exam- all with a clear consensus to delete. --Slon02 (talk) 00:28, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the numbers, but I think we have different definitions of significant or frequent. Because speedy deletion for articles is mainly a way to deal with reducing the load to the regular deletion processes, I think sacrificing the ability for the community to decide what to do requires a much higher load than 3-7%, especially since PRODs are not really a "load" on the process. If we are to sacrifice community consensus for efficiency, it should only be in cases where the reduction of AfDs would be something like 30%, 40%, not 3%. On a side note, not really pertaining to the discussion at hand, am I the only one wondering why proposals to allow admins to have more rights to bypass community discussions are mostly made by non-admins and it's mostly admins who argue against them? One would think that it would be in the interest of non-admins to strengthen community decision making, not weaken it. Regards SoWhy 10:04, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

It looks like we do. However, that 3-7% (which, in another sample, I found to be 4%), ends up being one of the most common AfD rationales. It looks like my guess of 80% of AfD's being about notability was confirmed- my sample had 81%. The second most frequent was original research, with 7%, and WP:DICT was third with 4%. Granted, it wasn't a very large sample size, but it still shows the overall pattern. It's not possible to get something like 30 or 40% because notability is such a common argument there, and with due reason. However, almost everything proposed at AfD that does deal with WP:DICT ends up being deleted without opposition. Since people don't oppose those deletions, and since it's obvious from the start that such "articles" would be deleted at some point anyway, dragging them to AfD really just smells of SNOW. --Slon02 (talk) 14:41, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say so but your argument is flawed. Arguing that almost all such articles will be deleted is for criterion #2 but it is not proof that it's frequent enough for #3. After all, we already have a process that deals with stuff that almost certainly would be deleted at AFD - it's called proposed deletion. It says so in the very first sentence of that policy. You need to make an argument why AFD and PROD cannot handle it, not why AFD should not have to handle it. Regards SoWhy 15:13, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. Criterion #3 fails to define how frequent something has to be. It specifically uses the words "If a situation arises only rarely". Facts show that it doesn't arise rarely- it arises once or twice every day. That doesn't mean that it comes up rarely- it means that it comes up frequently, especially when compared to other reasons for why articles are deleted. This type of article, in its most obvious form, ends up going to AfD often, yet it never needs to be treated on a case-by-case basis because everyone knows that it has to be deleted. It follows the same reasoning as G11- the pure and obvious forms of advertising are speedy deleted, the unclear ones are sent to PROD/AfD. The same reasoning can apply to dictionary definitions- if it's purely and obviously a definition and not an article, then it can safely be speedy deleted without it having to waste everyone's time at AfD. Also, your last sentence is contradicted by these words- "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." Adding this as a speedy deletion criteria will reduce the load, which is what speedy deletion is meant to do. --Slon02 (talk) 22:49, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

You are free to disagree, unfortunately that does not change the facts. G11 was created because PROD/XFD couldn't handle the amount of spam-pages created day-by-day, not because such pages are regularly deleted anyway. You persist on arguing based on AFD, when I already pointed out to you that WP:PROD was created exactly to not "to waste everyone's time at AfD", so all those arguments based on the potential outcome of an AfD for those articles are irrelevant. No one - except the straw man you created - argued that those articles should be handled at AfD. As for frequency: Once a day is not frequent - three dozen times a day is frequent. It's sad that we have to discuss the meaning of English words here when no one in the real world would ever think that something that happens 3% of the time is frequent. The same applies to your argument about the "load": If you look up the definition of load, it will usually be something like "a burden; a weight that slows you down; etc.". 3% of articles that are deleted after 7 days of PRODing (which usually does not create any more work than speedy tagging!) is not a burden for the processes. If you persist on arguing based on "load", you really need to explain why the load cannot be borne by PROD or AFD. I don't think one can validly argue that the sentence you cite was ever meant to mean anything else than reducing a burden that cannot be borne anymore. After all, despite common misconceptions, speedy deletion is not a normal deletion process - it's an exception that removes the ability of the community to decide the fate of an article. Since consensus is the project's "fundamental model for editorial decision-making", it should not be curtailed without a very good reason. And "I wouldn't have to wait 7 days for a PROD to expire" does not sound like a very good reason to me. Regards SoWhy 07:47, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

An article failing WP:NOT can often be fixed or content moved to remove the issue. Not appropriate. --MASEM (t) 21:20, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I had already limited the proposal to just two parts, and I believe that the wording should eliminate any possibilities where the articles could be fixed. --Slon02 (talk) 21:36, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

This is a great idea, and I think we need a proposed wording to refine this debate to where the criterium could be instituted or rejected. i kan reed (talk) 17:31, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

It shouldn't be about what "wikipedia is not" but about articles that aren't articles

I think we're looking at this backwards. WP:NOT is about what "wikipedia" is not. A lot of articles that definitely are "articles" (ie they're "wikified", written from a NPOV etc) are taken to AFD for failing one of the "nots". Pages in mainspace such as resumes, how-to guides, adcopy, and most essays aren't "articles" but right now the only one of these that's CSDable is "adcopy" (G11). I might support a CSD criteria, under the same logic we use to justify G11, for other kinds of pages that would need a "fundamental rewrite" to be articles and by "fundamental" I mean you would all but have to blank the page and start from scratch to make it an article. Yes they can be PRODed but the flaw here is that if the creator goes to WP:REFUND and asks for it back we technically have to restore it in all its brokenness. If it's speedied we can tell him to read WP:FIRST and try again.

However, one problem with this is that we may see a slew of BITEey applications of {{db-notanarticle}} to incomplete first drafts so it should only apply to "non-articles" that are in a complete or semi-complete state. I expect this idea to be opposed for all the reasons given in all the previous discussions pointed to above but it is something to think about. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 22:36, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

You..you're a genius! I think that this an amazing idea. The issue with BITEy applications of it already exists as a possibility with hasty tagging of A1/A3. That's also BITEy, yet not a lot of people do it. Some people not well familiar with policy do, but those cases aren't very frequent and those people are usually quickly corrected by another editor. --Slon02 (talk) 01:17, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

See my suggestion about dealing with blatant NFT pages above. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:18, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I've seen admins delete quite a few things as "WP:NOT - IAR" within the past two days, and this is a WP:NOT#ESSAY, (which somehow got tagged as A7). --Σ ^talk_contribs 07:09, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I am going to have to disagree with these as a speedy delete criteria, as a dictionary definition could be expanded. Almost all words in English could have an Encyclopedia article written on them, so we need a chance for them to grow. Instructions could be transwikied or converted to a suitable article with a rewrite. So that means we should give a chance for this to happen, so a prod gives this more of a chance. The aim of Wikipedia is to have more suitable articles so we should not speedy delete out of existence articles that could grow if the they a week's reprieve. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:30, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

WP:NOT is a very subjective area--check out all the bus route AfD discussions currently underway. Speedy criteria are only for very concrete things, so this is simply not workable. If there are specific instances of NOT that are 1) clearcut, 2) always resolved the same way, and 3) frequent enough, individual criteria can be enhanced to cover them, but a general NOT CSD is not appropriate. Jclemens (talk) 15:16, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

What I'm thinking of is pages like Beer tac toe, Ong language, or Got curled?, which were all self-serving NFT pages (admins only; I just remember them). The wording I thought of some months ago was "Articles stating that the subject was made/invented less than a month (or 30 days, don't care which) ago and assert no notability"; that's just a rough draft, but that gets at the basic problem. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:04, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Also, Midd. --Σ ^talk_contribs 17:18, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

• I think that conceptually, this is a good way of putting it. However, historically there has been a lot of opposition to adding to the list of criteria unless the new criterion is very precisely and narrowly worded. I worry that there is no way to get "CSD A12: Page that is not an article" pared down enough that concerned inclusionists (like myself) will not worry that it will be so open to interpretation that it will license the mindless summary deletion of many good pages. Jclemens, for example, noticed this problem in his comment above. Pages like Beer tac toe or I ONT O are obvious speedy candidates to anyone who finds them, but good luck figuring out a principle that captures the "why" while not being too broadly defined. Regards, causa sui (talk) 22:54, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

  I'm guessing that if G11 hadn't been pretty much handed down from the foundation, it'd have been very difficult to pass through, because it's frequently a judgment call. That's what any criterion about NFT pages would have to be; I don't think that's A Bad Thing, but I definitely understand the desire to keep it narrow for the reasons described above. I'll try to work on some wording and see if I can make it a bit clearer. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:05, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

it has not been handed down by the foundation, at least not as a speedy criterion. On one hand, the general principle that Wikipedia is not for promotion or advertising is more basic than the WMF, and part of the original idea of an encyclopedia, as one of the meanings of NPOV; NPOV and promotionalism are incompatible fundamentally, The distinction is what differentiates an encyclopedia from a directory, which is not to say a directory is a poor idea either. But on the other hand, the actual rule that we speedy delete articles that are wholly promotional as contrasted to removing them by some other process is not fundamental, and is a local procedure only. I agree with Blade that it is in reality a very impractical rule, and impossible to accurately determine except in the extreme cases. The criterion of needing to be fundamentally rewritten is meaningless--with enough effort one can rewrite anything if there is potentially encyclopedic content to be had, and there is a continuum from mere copy editing to fundamental rewriting. It's entirely a matter of effort and judgment. I delete about half my speedies on G11, often in conjunction with A7, so I can make the dual argument. To be honest with myself, many of them are judgement calls, obvious enough to satisfy me as hopeless, not necessarily blindingly obvious. In fact hopeless' is the way I personally think of the criterion. I wouldn't enshrine that word, though, as it's even more subjective than the present wording. The only way to get perspective is to look at New Pages, and I do that every few days to reassure myself that there is a n essential purpose behind what I am doing, that somewhere around one-forth of the material submitted just has to go. That I must use such wording, implies both the subjectivity--but also the general agreement of almost everyone here.

in practice, seeing what a minority of admins insist upon deleting even though it fits no criterion, I would not broaden the criteria. WhatI'd wish instead is that we had some way of automatically requiring the judgment of two admins each time without it being an undue burden. The backlogs recently have been very small, so maybe this is a possibility. DGG ( talk ) 03:59, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

"Hopeless" is the word I'd choose to summarize the theme of our criteria. Speedy deletion is meant to remove pages that are so obviously inappropriate for Wikipedia that they have no chance of surviving a deletion discussion. "Maybe there are sources to support notability or maybe there aren't, but I'm too lazy to find out, and this little stub only says positive things about the subject, so I'll call that 'promotional'" is not a CSD candidate. If you're not >99% certain that a week-long AFD would result in hands-down deletion, then it's not a CSD candidate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Not to derail, but this is exactly the problem with the criteria for speedy deletion. Contrary to your expectations, once something meets one of the criteria, many admins feel that they are blessed by policy to delete it without considering other factors. This is a direct result of the uncharacteristically rigid, legalistic language of the policy page. Almost all of the rest of our policy pages are substantially more vague, openly inviting (and expecting) that editors use their own judgment and therefore personally take responsibility for what they're doing. That was the basis for my failed attempts (ironically, due to opposition from fellow inclusionists like DGG) to loosen up the language in the policy. Since we're not going to do that, and since many people are going to use the CSD policy more as a bought priesthood (relieving us of the burden of critical thought in hard or difficult cases through the rigid and mindless application of rules) than an electric fence, we have to be very paranoid about introducing new criteria. causa sui (talk) 17:27, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

"[G]ood luck figuring out a principle that captures the "why" while not being too broadly defined." In the past I've suggested the following criteria for articles in this vein, which I think really is narrowly tailored: An article on a thing (word, phrase, game, ceremony, philosophy, religion, etc.), which indicates that it was invented/coined by the article's creator or someone they know personally, and does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant. 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 or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines. I think WP:NFT and WP:NEO are really the last two frontiers for speedy deletion and this covers both in a way that is fairly objective, uncontestable, seen with some frequency, and is nonredundant with any existing criterion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:07, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd fully support adding that in as A11. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:47, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

While I support the principle subject to seeing statistics demonstrating the need (frequency of occurrence, universality of such pages being deleted). I'm, not entirely comfortable with the specific word "thing" nor with the list ending with "etc". I need to think longer though before I can suggest alternatives. I absolutely could not support unless the criterion is accompanied by an explicit statement that "important or significant" is a lower standard than notability and independent of verifiability and reliability of sources (like A7) - even with this text there are too many incorrect A7 taggings. Thryduulf (talk) 16:12, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Saugie. It went through a CSD, PROD, and finally an AfD. Enough said. --Σ ^talk_contribs 16:54, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I would support a new criterion that only covered WP:MADEUP and WP:NEO. --Σ ^talk_contribs 16:56, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm waiting until DGG gets a whiff of a CSD for a "thing". *g* We could consider removing the pseudo-constraint that the subject has to be a "thing" and just admit that we're going to delete anything that was "made up by your friends one day". But that seems to be nothing other than an extension of A7 to every possible article topic. Is that what we want to do? causa sui (talk) 17:09, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

While there would be some overlap with A7, neither would be a subset of the other - A7 covers things that are not made up in one day, and things that are made up in one day are not necessarily within the topic areas covered by A7. I believe the reason for the topic restrictions on A7 is that these are the only ones where it has been shown there is a load that AfD cannot cope with. CSDs only exist for those specific areas where XfD cannot cope, XfD is not for those cases where CSD doesn't apply (there is a fundamental philosophical difference that many people don't seem to get). It is for this reason that I don't support a universal extension of A7 and why I would want an A11 to be similarly demarked (although not necessary to the same topics). Thryduulf (talk) 18:59, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I see my repeated opinion was requested above on some particulars. Neologisms need to be checked--what to one admin will seem very obvious as a neologism is not necessarily so. I have a good deal of confidence in my own accuracy of judgment, but this is is one of the sorts of things that i would never attempt to judge for myself, without a chance for a community opinion, We have enough problems with administrators deleting articles based on their personal extensions of the established categories. A good many proposed neologisms have in fact been contested, with various results; the frequent AfD debate show that this is the sort of thing that is rarely obvious, unless it descends into hoax territory. We get a fair number of made up one day articles, and most go very nicely by prod--nobody usually contests them, but there are examples where schoolchildren may think and write that they made up what turns out to be a well known children's game. As for the special class of drinking games, all I can say is I consider them matters for expert, and the expertise of the community in this particular is likely to be far wider than any one of us, however wide our relevant experience. And if someone has clearly written an article just to be a nuisance, I consider that disruptive, and we already have speedy for that.

More generally, what we need to do is try to refine and narrow more exactly the present categories. A wrongfully deleted article usually equates to a lost editor, and avoiding that is more important than the speed at which we delete any particular article. The only acceptable way to go when unsure is AfD. The community may not always be right there, but individual admins acting on their own account would do considerably worse, and after an AfD nobody can say they did not have a chance at a fair hearing. DGG ( talk ) 02:07, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

By including the requirement that the article's text actually indicate that it was made up/coined by the article's creator or someone they know personally in my suggested language above, I cannot see how any of the false positives you speak of are not insulated against. This language takes pretty much all of the judgment call as to whether it an obvious neologism or thing made up one day out of the equation. I include that language purposely for that very reason. But let's not talk in the abstract. I performed this search and then looked at the text of the article that was present when taken to AfD, After looking at 30 AfDs I did not find a single one that would have even arguably met the suggested criterion, given the framed language. Can you point to any example of a neologism or NFT thing that was ever kept at AfD that could have been deleted under this criterion if it was in place? I can't even think of a hypothetical example.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 07:15, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

An example case

A perfect example of this: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Saugie. Admins can take a look at the article. The thing is either a completely crap dictionary definition or a WP:NEO. It falls so far from what we expect from a new article, and we had to bounce it around between PROD and AfD. It was finally deleted today, but if there were an "unambiguous, unsalvageable WP:NOT violation" criteria, we could have wasted a lot less time on it. There are plenty more such articles where that came from. I'd much rather spend time improving struggling articles in Special:NewPages than have to try and shove a round ball of trash into a square CSD criteria, or shuttle this kind of thing between PROD and AfD, or indeed, find admins willing to do IAR deletions. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:06, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and as the closing admin, I can personally attest that deleting irrecoverably non-notable neologisms and MADEUP things, among others, is overwhelmingly commonplace. The policy page simply needs to be updated to reflect this. Keep in mind that I'm the type of admin who typically hates to do out-of-order deletions, but because we see so many of these glaringly uncontroversial deletion candidates, and because {{prod}} is useless (it's usually removed by the article's creator soon after it's added), I simply do not hesitate on summarily deleting them after a quick google+sanity check. Taking them to AfD is simply a waste of time, because they always result in SNOW deletes. I have no idea what the people on this talk page want to phrase the new CSD(s) as, but the fact remains the policy needs to be updated to reflect the consensus that there realistically is a CSD for this type of thing already. --slakr^\ talk / 17:15, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Another piece of crap that I remember (but didn't tag, I think I saw G1 or G2 on it) was *~*. Another WP:MADEUP. I would believe that if we did make a new CSD criterion, it would have to be broken into different elements of the WP:NOT, to make it more concise and less open to interpretation. AfD and PROD are both a waste of a week. --Σ ^talk_contribs 17:32, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Son of PRA could be deleted as "Wikipedia is not a random free webhost". --Σ ^talk_contribs 18:05, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

You read my mind. I used "Wikipedia is not a general web host." These sorts of deletions are truly that obvious and commonplace, so there really needs to be a CSD for this so we don't have to keep falling back to WP:IAR or clogging up WP:AFD, and so that non-admins actually can use a tag other than the generic {{db}} each time to let us know. --slakr^\ talk / 18:09, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

IsisFlower Wikipedia and Randy sayrs. Surely WP:NOT is frequent enough that it needs a CSD criterion. --Σ ^talk_contribs 18:50, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

WP:NOT is far too broad and vague for a criterion, that will never happen. What might happen is that some specific subsections might get criteria, and these will be judged on the frequency of that specific failing occurring. It also isn't just about how frequent it is, it's about all articles falling within the definition always being deleted, and there being too many for AfD to handle. IsisFlower should have been moved to userspace as a test and the user educated that we're not a hosted. Randy sayrs was correctly deleted under G7 so is not evidence of the need for a new criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 20:55, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Poo-Poo Puddle - Wikipedia is not for things made up in one day, or for poor neologisms of crappiness. --Σ ^talk_contribs 03:08, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

While the title might be a neologism, the content was not something made up in one day. The content was an admittedly poorly written article about the effects of leaking sewage systems - an issue that has existed since there were sewerage systems. Whether there should be an article on this, and if so under what title, I'm not sure. I've not been able to find that we have such an article, but if we do this would be deletable under criterion A10, if not it should go to prod or AfD - there was no reason why leaving it up for a week would be harmful. That was a very bad speedy deletion, thank you for highlighting it. Thryduulf (talk) 10:55, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

As you well know, CSDs are extremely specific subsets of their corresponding policies and guidelines. G11 is a very strict application of the more general WP:SPAM. A7 is a very strict application of the more general WP:N. The list goes on. All of these were created because of the large number of out-of-process deletions that had to occur, and because AfD gets clogged with their backwash.

To say that a strict application of certain parts of WP:NOT is impossible to accomplish on this talk page might be correct, but only because of the vast number of anti-CSD interests that watch this talk page. So, like it or not, the so-called out-of-process deletions will continue, and nothing is going to be done about it, because WP:SNOW is a de facto criteria for speedy deletion. The more you force people to use SNOW in glaringly obvious cases, the more likely they're going to ignore the increasingly policy-crept anti-deletion CSD discussions on this talk page, and, ironically, the more stuff is going to get deleted out-of-process in the long run.

--slakr^\ talk / 12:20, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not (and I don't think other people here are) anti-CSD. What I am is anti-IAR speedy deletions, because they are fundamentally against the principle of consensus (CSD is a list of specific cases where there is consensus that individual discussion is not required, because consensus for deletion is a given). WP:SNOW is not speedy deletion - speedy deletion is deletion without discussion, WP:SNOW is deletion with abbreviated discussion (there is a big difference). If there are lots of the same things being SNOWed then that is evidence that a CSD criterion for them. If they're all deleted out of process then we don't know that the criterion is needed.

Regarding WP:NOT, I never said a strict interpretation of parts of it is impossible - just that a strict interpretation of all of it under one criterion is. For example see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of bus routes in Peterborough where the nominator and some others are convinced that it falls foul of WP:NOTDIR, while other editors of equal standing are equally convinced that it does not. Speedy deletion is only for things that will always be deleted, and this discussion shows that not everything that some people think meets WP:NOT always will be (previous discussions of lists of bus routes have mostly ended in keep or no consensus, but some have been deleted). Therefore a criterion to exclude things that are not for Wikipedia needs to be more specific. Thryduulf (talk) 12:49, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Once again, we're talking about things that clearly and irrecoverably violate WP:NOT, and we're really only talking about a certain subset of NOT that frequently occurs, is obvious, and are indisputable violations (e.g., WP:NOTWEBHOST, among others). That's the reason why someone hasn't gone and WP:SNOW deleted the article you mentioned out-of-process—it's not just because there isn't a CSD to cover it. Conversely, most admins don't go around deleting things that do meet a CSD on a technicality, either, if it's obvious that it shouldn't be deleted. --slakr^\ talk / 13:19, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Because "I know it when I see it" is never going to be a CSD criterion, we need to define what it is about such "things that clearly and irrecoverably violate WP:NOT" that makes them so and we have to do so in a way that generates the absolute minimum number of false positives. Thryduulf (talk) 13:50, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

For the moment I'll comment on 2 of these..

• Saugie was snow deleted at AFD and right now I think this is the most effective was to treat "blatantly unverifiable" subjects that aren't CSD G3 candidates. Skip PROD, send them to AFD, and let it be snow deleted as soon as other participants say they can't verify the subject either.
• Son of PRA It would have been obvious to anybody with even the most basic knowledge of WP that it wasn't an "article" and trying to pass it off as one is like going to a football game with a net and tennis racket and saying "this is how we should play football". (OT: see m:Maddenville for an essay I wrote on this) It was articles non-articles like this I had in mind when I started the previous subsection.

--Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:20, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I would, however, note that Saugie's delete-worthiness is clearly evident on a single google search. That's why it's extremely easy to verify blatantly, irrecoverably non-notable neologisms, and that's the reason why sending them to AfD, even for the SNOW-pile of delete-!votes, is a waste of time. :P It's like using G3 to apply to hoaxes; a simple google search reveals that either the possible hoax is a true hoax or it reveals that there might be a shade of possibility of factuality. I'm saying that the same standard should be applied to self-evident things like that that would be more BITE-y to call vandalism than to just develop a separate CSD for blatant, irrecoverable violations of clear-and-evident portions of NOT. --slakr^\ talk / 13:37, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I completely disagree that getting consensus to delete something that does not meet the CSD criteria is a waste of time. There is no deadline. If sending them to AfD means that there is evidence of a need for a CSD criterion then the time has not been wasted. Thryduulf (talk) 13:52, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I concur with Slakr. The whole point of this discussion is "hey, look, there's lots of stuff which no sane person would ever suggest isn't speedy-worthy but the criteria doesn't quite cover them, so let's change the criteria". I'll probably follow Ron Ritzman's advice next time I find a Saugie-type example (I give it a couple of hours of NPPing) and go straight to AfD rather than PROD, but surely the fact that I'm having to "hack" the deletion system to get stuff like that deleted shows we need to extend CSD sooner rather than later. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:09, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

"Hack the deletion system"!? How on earth is nominating something at AfD hacking the deletion system!? Articles for deletion is the standard way that articles on Wikipedia are deleted, CSD is the "hack" to allow things to be deleted without discussion in a limited range of circumstances where consensus agrees this isn't needed. Thryduulf (talk) 15:29, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you're understanding his point. Tom Morris is commenting on the irony that because of a loophole in the process, he is forced into skipping PROD (which is supposed to be for uncontroversial deletions) and going straight to AFD because the snow delete on AFD is actually faster. That is technically "out of process" but still necessary since it's the shortest distance between "Creation of an indubitably speedy-worthy article not covered by current CSD" and "Article is deleted". causa sui (talk) 17:51, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

It may or may not be faster depending on how much attention it gets or which admin closes it. The main advantage to using AFD instead of PROD for "non-articles" and "semi-hoaxes" is that the clowns who create them can't go to REFUND and ask for them back. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 23:56, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure that sending something to AfD that could be prodded is "out of process" (although I'll admit to not being as intimately familiar with prod policy as I am with CSD), but prod not working as intended is no reason to speedy delete something that is not covered by CSD criteria. Thryduulf (talk) 18:44, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

You're right that it isn't. That's why editors here are trying to get it done the right way and amend the policy -- in this very discussion. causa sui (talk) 19:00, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Adikiaphobia, Going HAM and Opposite Week. --Σ ^talk_contribs 05:22, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

• Opposite Week is at AfD. While this might be deletable under a "not for things made up by the author" criterion, it's not a classic example of such things and so could be borderline depending on the wording of the criterion. Worth noting though. Thryduulf (talk) 12:40, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
• Going Ham. Hmm. Deleted under WP:CSD#A3, which doesn't actually fit. It does make me think though that "articles that do nothing but define the title", where a definition already exists in Wiktionary or where the content would not be acceptable at Wiktionary might be a good expansion of that criterion (it's not a great leap from "restating the title" to "definining the title") if we can work out a good wording that does not require a knowledge of Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion. In this example, I see several mentions of the phrase and a couple of what might be uses but in sources that are not "durably archived" (one of Wiktionary's requirements, but which as is not a concept in use here most Wikipedia admins will be unfamiliar with), so it would be speedily deletable. Confusing matters for the lexically inexperienced though is that "going ham" is a term used with a completely different meaning in the amateur radio community (meaning, I think, to select/use the HAM radio system/technology/conventions(?) opposed to a different one, e.g. CB radio). Thryduulf (talk) 12:40, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
• Adikiaphobia correctly deleted as a hoax (G3), based on it being a dictionary definition deleted from Wiktionary as a "creative invention/protologism". Obviously any dictionary definition deleted from Wiktionary would be a clear delete under the slight expansion of A3 I mused about above. I'll start a new separate discussion on this. Thryduulf (talk) 12:40, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

"Going ham" was tagged by me first as G1, which was then deleted as G1 and recreated under another title, which I didn't tag, but asked on IRC as "TheSigma" for advice on what CSD criterion it truly fell under. It was deleted as A3 by User:Zscout370 I believe. The series of phobias aren't G3 (hoax) because if you check the roots out with their Latin definitions, they are true. The phobias were just non-notable neologisms. We need a new set of CSD criteria to cover non-notable neologisms with no chance of being salvaged. (Vague idea, it will get developed further) --Σ ^talk_contribs 06:37, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

On the same topic: why is stuff like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Slogans on earth at AfD? This should be part of CSD's bailiwick. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:20, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

It is. Speedily deleted as A1. Thryduulf (talk) 13:46, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm... that's true, but I still don't see what criterion Beer tac toe or I ONT O quite fall under, or Once you jump a fence, an ocean is no problem". All three of those would definitely fall under the wording proposed above; the best I can think would be to highlight the importance of the "which explicitly indicates that it was invented/coined by the article's creator or someone they know personally" part (italicized word added by me). That would keep the software and books by minor companies out of an A11 while incorporating the "book" written two days ago by the article's creator. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:59, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Pay you a dollar, Pasta chili, Merriage, Tray Golf, Education loans: How to plan and manage loan repayment, 8 Strategies to Having a Great Website, Passionate Marriage. --Σ ^talk_contribs 02:13, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

The Contribution of Sports to Community and Youth Development in Nannyville, Kingston Jamaica. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 00:53, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

That was exclusively promotional in tone and so covered by G11, so no need for a new criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 02:05, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Roberts list of greatest presidents. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 04:50, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

No, that should not be speedily deletable as it requires checking to show that it is indeed original research and not some other person's list (that may or may not be notable) or sytnthesis of notable opinions that should be reworked into other articles. In this case it is original research that should be deleted, but future things of this type need more analysis than is appropriate for speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 16:48, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

How about adding to the currently nonexistent criterion that the article must plainly state that the creator has a close connection with the neologism or madeup game or guide or whatever, for example, "This word or game or whatever was made on 12:06, 12 May 2024 UTC [refresh] by Joe "? Things such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Band football (which happens to not be A7-able, which is why I declined it) and the aforementioned examples that went through AfD were just a waste of a week for what was sure to be a blizzard. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 22:23, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

That proposed criterion wouldn't allow things like Band football to be deleted as the article makes no "plain statement" about a close connection between the author and subject (it makes no statement at all). I still don't see why such articles need to be speedily deleted, they aren't harmful and they are not overwhelming AfD or prod. If all of those you've listed here over about 3 weeks were all examples of things clearly made up by/closely associated with the article author and not speedily deletable using existing criteria (at a rough guess only about a third are) and had been submitted over 2-3 days at absolute most then I'd say there was certainly a case to be looked at. As things stand you haven't demonstrated a need, nor a specific wording that would allow the deletion of those you want to delete without generating false positives. Thryduulf (talk) 22:49, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I almost snow deleted Band football but decided to turn my closing rationale into a !vote instead. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 03:55, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Really? The close connection was plainly stated in the first sentence in band football. What about MOBILE PHONES AND CHILDREN, if it weren't a copyvio? The very title of the page is dripping with the words "Wikipedia is not a place for essays", and even clueless anonymous users who read without editing would believe that it is unencyclopedic. The history of me AfD'ing the NOT violations have resulted in blizzards of Delete. If such pages are so uncontroversially deleted, why not speed it up? --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 23:18, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

We get plenty of WP:NEO and WP:NFT every day. Often they are IAR'ed so we don't see them at AfD too often, which is sort of the whole point: When it becomes common practice to IAR certain types of subjects, that suggests a criterion is probably needed. Σ suggested a close connection as part of the nonexistent criterion; that's already in the proposed criterion I suggested higher in this discussion. You're right that including that would make it miss some, but including that gets us over the hump of being narrowly tailored so it doesn't rope in false positives. As for "a specific wording that would allow the deletion of those you want to delete without generating false positives", can you think of even a hypothetical example of an article that would meet the criterion I proposed that would generate a false positive?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:03, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I tried, and I haven't come up with anything. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:05, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Selling a restaurant. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 04:19, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Why would that need to be speedily deleted? Yes, it's not what Wikipedia is for, but it's not actually doing any harm is it? I also fail to see how it would be caught by a criterion as proposed here for things that were made up by the author? Thryduulf (talk) 10:07, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I put that there because I saw someone note that "unfortunately, no CSD criteria apply", and thought it would be worthy of note. Like I said, as the page is being destroyed in the blizzard so uncontroversially, why not speed it up? --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 17:40, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Because that's not what CSD is for. CSD is categories of narrowly and carefully pages that will always be deleted and would either either overwhelm the relevant XfD pages (e.g. A7), would do harm to keep around (e.g. G12) or there is no need for discussion (e.g. U1). The page in question here meets none of these requirements (and we have WP:SNOW for these sorts of things).

It's possible that things like articles that state the subject was made up by the author or their friend and which assert no significance or importance might fit the frequency requirement for a criterion, but you'll only demonstrate that by highlighting pages that would actually fit that criteria. Listing random pages that might be speedily deletable if some other undefined (and even unmentioned) criteria existed doesn't help make the case for anything.
I suggest you start a new section (not a sub-section of this one or it's parent) on this page explicitly proposing a defined criterion (taking note of the guidance at the top of the page) and either include or link to a list of pages that would be deletable under that criterion if it were implemented. If you have proposals for more than one criterion, make a separate section for each. If you want to bring to the attention of people who watch this page random pages that people think should be speedy deletable, then start a separate section for that, but unless you can explain how they relate to something that meets the frequency requirements for a new criterion or ammendment of an existing one, then I don't really see the point.
This section is obscurely titled and so muddled with discussion about random pages and multiple criteria that it's becoming next to useless for anything. Thryduulf (talk) 18:34, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Criterion for made-up subjects

"An article about a thing (word, phrase, game, ceremony, philosophy, religion, etc.), which plainly indicates that it was invented/coined by the article's creator or someone they know personally, and does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant. 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 or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines." Neologisms sometimes can't be deleted as a hoax because the roots sometimes make sense. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 03:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The proposed criteria does not consider whether there is a credible claim of importance, or even if the subject is notable. I would suggest incorporating the importance criteria of A7, otherwise what happens if someone with a username related to the subject, makes an article about a new game or invention that is actually notable? Monty₈₄₅ 03:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I forgot to include an example. Tappy jack shack and Gaalball. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 03:48, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

That is a valid concern. I have added a bit to the sentence. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 03:48, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Isn't this and more already included in the criterion I suggested above (which no one has been able to come up with a false-positive for), or is there some limitation you're seeing?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:18, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I've copied what you've written and added "plainly" in front of "indicates that it was invented..." The only thingt hat worries me is that the "etc." and "thing" will be used by more imperfect new-page patrollers as an excuse to tag things that shouldn't be tagged, though my suggestion wasn't better. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 04:56, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Well "thing" could be replaced by "subject" or "topic", but if we're not limiting it to specific subjects then I don't see a need to list any. So perhaps "An article which plainly indicates the subject was invented, coined or developed by the article's creator...". If we are limiting it to specific subjects, we need to explicitly list them. I'd have written "clearly" rather than "plainly", as I think that would fit better with the other criteria, but it's probably just a stylistic choice. Thryduulf (talk) 10:12, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I support the wording of Fuhghettaboutit above; and as a word of advice, Σ, we have plenty of examples of what you're getting at. Any more would be overkill, and won't help us keep this discussion on track. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I Oppose Fugehettaboutit's version as it includes the vague language "thing (... etc)". As I said above if we're not limiting it to certain subjects then we should make that clear rather than leave it open for wikilawyering. If we are limiting it to specific subjects we need to explicitly list those. As I believe we are not limiting it, I could support the following.

An article which plainly indicates that the subject was invented/coined by the article's creator or someone they know personally, and does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant. 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 or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines.

This is simpler and with little ambiguity. Changing "plainly" to "explicitly" would be completely unambiguous, but I get the impression from the above discussion that this wouldn't be supported. Thryduulf (talk) 15:35, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Though anything which satisfies this criterion will almost certainly be deleted there are an awful lot of blatant NFT examples that don't explicitly say that the subject was invented by the article's creator or someone close to them, such as Sandy pants, Xopiad, Copy Paste Game, or Snauzball. I suspect that if this criterion was introduced the wording would be routinely stretched to include other types of NFT deletions. Hut 8.5 16:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I've posted a list of some more examples of MADEUP deletions to my userspace. Hut 8.5 19:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I'm glad you support the proposal. It is support, you've just failed to parse the language. Replacimg thing with topic with no list of examples is a language tweak resulting in no change to the proposed criterion's meaning at all, and if you support that, as you indicate above, then you support the criterion. Let me put it another way. You seem to think that "thing" followed by a list of examples plus "etc." is ambiguous as to whether its limited to just those examples or not. That is not a reasonable interpretation, and not open to wikilawyering, since the natural language meaning of it is unambiguously open-ended—that's what the words used mean. The reason I put the list of examples in, and prefer that form, is because it travels down the route of listing the most common NFT topics we see, plus invoking WP:NEO (with "word"), thus giving a reminder right in the criterion of items to look for. But all we're talking about is window dressing, not opposition to its actual meaning; your tweak of the language leaves us with it applying to exactly the same subjects, under exactly the same prerequisites, and we shouldn't get bogged down in that minutia.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:58, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it is not mere semantics. Given the wide consensus that CSD criteria should be applied to the letter, it is important that we get the letters absolutely correct, and that means being precise rather than vague. Using "thing" rather than "topic" is less precise (is an abstract philosophical idea a "thing"? G11 was reworded due to a similar query iirc), using a list of examples when none is needed makes the criterion harder to parse and leaves it open to argument whether it was intended for the criterion to include things are listed, things that are similar to those listed (how similar?) or everything. I have been around here long enough to write "oppose" when I mean oppose and not write "oppose" when I mean support. You will also note that I could support an alternative wording (meaning dependent on other things, such as frequency, etc) not that I do support it. Thryduulf (talk) 13:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

You've missed the whole point. You are supporting the substance of the criterion, but just don't like the precise language and have suggested some tweaks. Your use of "oppose" is thus outre. As I've indicated, I don't wish to get bogged down in that, and I don't think you understood what I meant by that: even though it's not a substantive change, even though you think it is, I'm fine with your redrawn version since it retains the criterion I suggested. The issue is thus moot. Others may suggest tweaks to your redrawn language, but support having such a criterion and I don't expect them to couch their suggestions as "opposes" either.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:12, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Note I explicitly said "Oppose Fugehettaboutit's version", not oppose the concept. (I am still undecided on whether I can support a criterion for this or not, so please do not put words into my mouth). I feel the issue is significant enough that I can support one version but not another, so I have said that I oppose the version I cannot support (if you don't think it is that significant then we will have to agree to disagree). This is qualitatively different to a change where one can still support the earlier version as a 2nd choice - if this were the case here I would have said I prefer my version rather than opposing the earlier version. "Oppose" means I do not support something for the reasons following the bolded "oppose" (as is Wikipedia convention). It does not necessarily mean I support or oppose a wider or narrower point, or an alternative. I hope people oppose my version if they cannot support it, even if there is another version they do support; if they prefer an alternative but would still support my version then I hope they express this. What is needed now is for comment from other people to see if there is consensus to implement this or not. Thryduulf (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I understand your position. I understand your changes as well and how you have characterized them as a substantive change; I understand how you are parsing the original language, even though your interpretation doesn't comport with plain English language meaning. But you want to fight over that characterization, and how I turned your post back on you, and I don't want to fight. I have said in effect: "fine, you like this other language better and think it's really different? I don't think it is, but let's use it and move on" (that you've changed your stated position of supporting your own redrawing of the language is a separate matter). Nothing you are saying, after my support of your language, is at all focused on the criterion, whether we should have it or not. A person reading the past few posts just sees squabbling. So can you drop the stick and move forward?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:12, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with everything you've just said, but I do agree that this discussion is not productive (per the final sentence of my previous comment). No stick to drop, but more than happy to move forward. Thryduulf (talk) 11:20, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I would just like to go on record just as I said about products and services below, that I am wholly in favour of an additional criterion for 'made up' stuff. This morning I was faced with the dilemma of eitherapplying CSD by the letter and sending a whole page of nonsense by an 11 year old about his club of friends who play games in the woods to AfD because there is no criterion to delete it, or choosing G2 and getting rid of it on the spot. I suppose if push came to shove, Arbcom could desysop me if <i had used the the wrong criterion, but do we really want that sort of rubbish to stay online for seven days while people debate it its existence? Or worse, run the risk of having it closed as keep because the kid who wrote it has canvassed all his palls in the shoolyard? Nevertheless, and unfortunately, talking about kids again, there is no rush to add new CSD criteria until we have resolved the extremely urgent issues surrounding NPP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Criterion for guides

"A page in article space that does nothing other than give advice, instructions, suggestions, and other directives that are nearly impossible to rewrite to become encyclopedia articles." Example: IMacsoft iPod to Mac Transfer. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 03:51, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

• I don't like this phrasing at all. I can't immediately come up with an alternative for the first part, but for the second I'd suggest using the "need to be fundamentally rewritten" language of G11. Additionally, I'm still not convinced that guides would meet the frequency requirement. Thryduulf (talk) 10:16, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Declined speedies

NONE:

While there were plausible arguments put forward that removing a Speedy tag was evidence that the applicable article did not then meet the criteria of an obvious speedy deletion, it was strongly argued that the proposed wording was not clear enough, and that introducing an extra layer to the Speedy deletion process was too bureaucratic, was against the principle of cutting down on wasted process, and would allow the Speedy process to be subverted. The !vote tally, though, was quite close, and suggests that the idea could be refined and re-proposed with brief, clear and bullet-proof wording. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:45, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

After a discussion at ANI, I added the following paragraph to this guideline:

If speedy deletion has been declined once, the page should not be retagged for the same type of speedy deletion. The fact that speedy deletion was declined proves that deletion of that specific page is contentious, and therefore per definition the page is not a candidate for speedy deletion, which should be uncontroversial.

This paragraph was in accordance with the sentiments expressed there by several editors. Nevertheless, one editor thinks the wording should be improved a little before it can be added here, so I'd like to ask for your comments. Debresser (talk) 15:30, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Do we really need to add that? Don't get me wrong, I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think the policy has to spell it out, just because one editor cannot accept that the policy just does not work the way he would like it to (anyone who knows me is that I almost never criticize another editor this way but this incident is really too much even for me). Such editing is already prohibited by our policies: It violates Wikipedia:Edit warring; it constitutes an attempt of admin shopping; it violates Wikipedia:Administrators#Reversing another administrator's action (although that section only refers to one admin undoing the actions of another, it's clear that "normal" editors shouldn't either); and Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Speedy deletion is clear that a dispute about whether a page fits a tag should be resolved by XFD, not deletion; etc. But then again, spelling it out clearly won't do any harm and it has been crystal clear consensus for years now that you should not re-tag something after an admin made a decision. Since it already is based on the policies (see above), adding it to WP:CSD is only a formal matter. Regards SoWhy 15:48, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that it would be an appropriate addition. We don't write pages like this to tell an editor as sensible as SoWhy what is and isn't permissible. We write them to stop problems that we shouldn't be experiencing, and this looks exactly like the kind of problem that we shouldn't be experiencing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:25, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

It might need a definition of what we mean by "decline". Evidently removal of the speedy tag by the article author doesn't count, but quite often the article author removes the tag, is warned, and the tag is immediately removed again by an IP, almost certainly the author logged out. We shouldn't require that to go to AfD. "Declined by an admin" is too strong, any good-faith decline should be enough. Say " ..has been declined once, for a plausible reason stated in the edit summary... "? JohnCD (talk) 16:40, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I support the addition of this text, with JohnCD's amendment. This is an issue often enough (especially for a csd-declining-non-admin like myself) that it would be useful to have it spelled out, even though it already is implicit in policy. Thparkth (talk) 16:50, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

@JohnCD - I disagree with the proposed ammendment, and here's an example of why. New editor writes an article that states in its entirety: "John Smith goes to high school at JFK high school. He is a bad student. He distributes child pornography. Everybody hates him." A NPP taggs the article for deletion under G10. Another editor (either an SPA or an inexperienced editor who is trying to be helpful) comes along, reverts the tag, and gives an edit summary along the lines of "This isn't really an attack page. It could be important. Should be a BLP PROD instead." Another editor should be allowed to restore the G10 tag in that case, and not go through AfD. That's why I like the "declined by admin" wording better. Singularity42 (talk) 17:04, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the sentiment of the proposal, but ultimately do not support the policy as worded. Example: editor tags the article for deletion under G12, but forgets to include the URL of the source. The tag is declined by an admin. Under the above policy, it cannot be re-tagged for speedy deletion under G12, even if the proper source is identified. Instead, it would have to go through PROD/AfD, which is inappropriate for copyright material. The same is true for many other situations that the various speedy deletion tags are used for.

I might reconsider changing my support position (or lack thereof at the moment), if the policy was restricted to A7, where I think the policy makes more sense. The policy should also clearly state that the CSD tag was removed because it was declined by a reviewing admin, not because it was contested by another editor. Singularity42 (talk) 16:57, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

(e/c x 2) Strongly in agreement with JohnCD that this needs qualification. Since only admins can delete, only admins can "decline" to delete so I think its confusing to lump removal of tags in with declining. There are others way to indicate a plausible reason than the edit summary. So I suggest: If speedy deletion has been declined once by an administrator, or the speedy deletion tag is removed by an uninvolved editor who indicates a plausible reason for that removal, the page should not be retagged for the same type of speedy deletion. The fact that speedy deletion was contested in this way renders deletion of that specific page contentious, and therefore the page is not a candidate for speedy deletion, which is normally only applicable to uncontroversial topics.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:01, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree that this is something it wouldn't harm to say. I think the wording could be improved from the above though, particularly it implies that tagging with a different CSD criterion is acceptable, whereas it almost always isn't (the exceptions being pretty much just G9, G12 and, possibly, G5). Thryduulf (talk) 17:05, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

• I agree that this should be in the policy in one form or another. This happens all the time. causa sui (talk) 17:12, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the wording of Fuhghettaboutit, apart from the word "normally", which should either be removed or replaced by "per definition" as in my original text, since "normally" is too weak. Debresser (talk) 19:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

If speedy deletion has been declined by an administrator, or the speedy deletion tag has been removed by an uninvolved editor who indicated a plausible reason for that removal, the page should not be re-tagged for the speedy deletion; this rule does not apply when circumstances later change in such a way that the reason for declining to speedy delete the page is no longer valid (for example if it turns out later that the page is a copyright violation). The fact that speedy deletion was contested in this way renders deletion of that specific page contentious, and therefore the page is not a candidate for speedy deletion, which is by definition only applicable to pages where deletion would be uncontroversial.

How's that? I used Fuhghettaboutit's proposal with a little tweak and included Debresser's suggestion above. Regards SoWhy 19:53, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that's excellent. I have BOLDly tweaked SoWhy's words slightly, and I hope uncontroversially - this diff shows the changes I made - feel free to reverse them. JohnCD (talk) 21:47, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Very good. Debresser (talk) 22:05, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that works pretty well. One minor nit: "...the page should not be re-tagged for the speedy deletion;..." --Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:51, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that was on purpose. Meaning "the same type of speedy". But other types are of course allowed. Perhaps that should be said more explicitly? Debresser (talk) 23:06, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

If that is meant as the definitive the, I don't think it does it well, and so if we mean that I think we would need to add back "same type of speedy deletion". However, if we do that then the example about G12 becomes a non sequitur and will need to be changed--if we first say you can't retag under the same, it already means implicitly re-tagging under another criterion is fair game. The G12 example only makes sense if the first part speaks to all criterion (but I don't think it should). Thinking about suggested language.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:36, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I like SoWhy's version overall, but given the known problems with IPs, I'd be willing to upgrade the "uninvolved editor" to "uninvolved registered editor" if others thought that was a good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I think this solves a lot of the ambiguity with whether it applied to the same criterion only, or to all, the problem with the example not making sense if it applied only to the same criterion example, and the last sentence has been fixed because it really was a problem from the beginning, parsing as not allowing speedy deletion ever after an initial contest, even for a later copyvio or other later arising basis:

If speedy deletion has been declined by an administrator, or the speedy deletion tag has been removed by an uninvolved editor who indicated a plausible reason for that removal, the page should not be re-tagged for the same type of speedy deletion, but may be tagged under another applicable criterion, e.g., if it is later found that the page is a copyright violation. The fact that speedy deletion is contested renders deletion of a page under a particular criterion contentious, and therefore the page is not a candidate for speedy deletion under the contested criterion, since speedy deletion is by definition only applicable to pages where deletion would be uncontroversial.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. If an admin declines to speedy delete a page, they have in almost every case checked whether the page fits any criterion and not just the one it was tagged for. Thus, when they decline it, it should not be tagged again at all, unless it's clear that the admin couldn't have considered the reason for the new tagging. Regards SoWhy 06:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

In general, for most of the speedy criteria, if any editor in good standing contests a speedy, this a sufficient reason to have a discussion. Further discussion should be taken to XfD, and page should be considered non-speediable.

For several of the file speedy criteria especially, a contest would require an immediate explanation (eg "its not corrupted, you just need the new version"). Without an explanation, the FfD discoussion could be closed early.

The obvious expections are:

• G9 It's their site
• G10 If an editor in good standing thinks it applies, further discussion should go off-line or at least with the offensive'illegal material not in plain site.
• G12, F7, F9, New information that shows that there is a copyright problem trumps.

These contest-exempt cases may still need a discussion at XfD or DRV, but the material should be deleted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:20, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes the wording should be uninvolved registered editor in good standing, I also think that G4 also needs special mention as unless it is a procedural decline due to the page being deleted by PROD or CSD to contest it, you really need to be able to see the deleted version. Also has anyone thought of a Talk page template like {{Old prod full}} to indicate the CSD decline ? Mtking ^(edits) 00:10, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I have seen IPs make perfectly valid speedy contests so I don't think we should limit this to registered users. What would you suggest about G4? I donlt think we should go too far afield. See {{Oldcsd}} which I created just for this purpose, though it isn't used much.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that if someone (in good standing, IP or otherwise) takes the trouble to contest a G4, and when questioned they are sure, then let them have their XfD. So it will take another seven days. If a trend develops for deleting the tags and failing to make a relevant argument at XfD, consider making a rule about ignoring disruptive tag removers. I don't think G4 is special, except that new users who encounter G4 often need to shown WP:Notability. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:20, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

G4 should not be considered special. It is often possible to conclude that a present article does not contain the faults that lead to a previous one of the same title being deleted, even without seeing the deleted article. One example that springs to mind is Truth in Numbers? which led to a little bit of drama of the kind that this policy clarification should hopefully avoid in future. Thparkth (talk) 01:29, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Both Fuhghettaboutit's and my proposed wordings include "indicated a plausible reason for that removal", so removing G4 with a plausible reason why it does not apply is already covered. Also, I don't think IPs or new editors should be left out. Again, the requirement to "indicate[d] a plausible reason for that removal" is imho sufficient to weed out malicious removals. After all, removing a speedy tag without specifying a reason at all or without specifying a plausible reason why it does not apply is never allowed by this proposal, no matter whether the removing editor is new or established. Regards SoWhy 06:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree, I can see this leading to attempts to game the system and lots of wiki-layering over what constitutes "a plausible reason" and what constitutes an IP editor in good standing, it it one who removes it with his first edit, second edit, tenth edit ? Mtking ^(edits) 08:10, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

"Plausible reason" means any reason why the page does not meet any criterion for speedy deletion. As for good standing, I would not require any such limits. If the IP removes a misplaced tag on a clearly notable topic with their first edit, should we revert them just because they have no "good standing"? Imho, the standard to judge editors by in this case is the actual edit they made, not how they acted previously. Otherwise it would imply that you have more leeway to make bad edits if you have "good standing" than you would have if you are a new editor. That can't be the goal. Regards SoWhy 08:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I guess "in good standing" is not so well defined. To me, it is the default position. It would mean "not blocked or banned", or sanctioned in relation to the issue (at a minimum). It might also mean "not in an active dispute". A newcomer arrives in good standing, and remains so for as far as one can asusme good faith. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:35, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry maybe I did not make my point, I agree with you on what the intent of the phrase "Plausible reason" is, and I am not saying that we should revert an IP removal on spec at all. But I just see this leading to more confusion and drama with editors wiki-layering over if it was a plausible reason, was it the creator logging out to remove the tag or was it an un-involved editor. Mtking ^(edits) 08:52, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Good point. As much as I hate to have admins as moderators, maybe in this case we can add something like "If you disagree with the removal of a tag or what constitutes a plausible reason, request the assistance of an uninvolved administrator." After all, if admins are tasked to decide whether to speedy delete something or not, it's a logical step to let them decide whether the removal of a tag was justified or not. Regards SoWhy 09:05, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

That seems a reasonable alternative, can we find some words to tag on to Fuhghettaboutit above, that makes it clear an administrator can still delete the page if they feel it meets the criteria and a non-admin removed the tag. To make it clear, if an admin removes the tag even without a reason, then that puts an end to it in my mind, else we get into admin shopping. Mtking ^(edits) 10:02, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely disagree. There is no point in having any of this clarification if we undermine it in this way. An administrator should absolutely not be able to speedily delete an article where the speedy tag has been removed in good faith by an uninvolved editor. At that point, they know the deletion is controversial and they would be deleting it against CSD policy, and hence against consensus. Furthermore, there is no reason either in principle or based on pragmatic experience to privilege the opinion of administrators in this matter. Thparkth (talk) 11:53, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

The deletion may be controversial, but if the page meets one of the WP:CSD, it may be deleted. This is not WP:PROD. If something was deleted incorrectly, ask the deleting admin to reconsider or use WP:DRV. Part of the point of CSD is to have no bureaucracy attached to the deletion process itself. However, a good admin will see if a page has been re-tagged after having the tag removed, and should include this information in their decision whether or not to delete. —Kusma (t·c) 12:25, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

If one uninvolved editor believes it meets a speedy deletion criteria, and another does not, it should go to AfD. The fact that one of the editors may have the technical ability to perform the deletion should not change this principle at all. We need to make it clear that an administrator who speedily deletes an article when that deletion is controversial among uninvolved editors, does so in error. Thparkth (talk) 13:24, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Generally support this and all being written here. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:35, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

(In reply to Sowhy) - Disagree with this addition. It should be If you disagree with the removal of a tag, take it to AfD. Given the number of uninvolved administrators who think WP:NOT is a speedy deletion criteria, or think that having no sources cited makes something an A7 candidate, it will certainly be possible to find one who will agree with the deletion of absolutely anything on absolutely any grounds. And indeed, there is no reason to privilege their opinion over that of an ordinary editor. AfD is the only option for controversial speedies. Thparkth (talk) 11:49, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

"If you disagree with the removal of a CSD tag, take it to AfD" should be stated clear and simple, yes. I think Sowhy was fairly addressing a concern of an editor removing tags (perhaps many) not-in-good-faith. Note that admins may, and do, delete speedily on sight, without tags involved at all - we trust that they know what they are doing. We could write "WP:NOT is not a speedy criterion" both at WP:CSD and at the top of WP:NOT, although I have noted that all admins become a little more shy when their deletions are critically reviewed at WP:DRV, and so the situation is self-correcting anyway. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:42, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, yes. My response was to Mtking's concern of non-good-faith removals being used to wiki-lawyer. If anyone removes a tag in good faith with good reasons, then it should not be speedy deleted. Kusma is correct that the policy allows an admin to speedy delete even in those cases but imho that should be a rare exception. Since speedy deletion is based on the principle that the deletion of such pages is uncontroversial, any good faith disagreement imho removes this base and thus makes the page ineligible for speedy deletion. Regards SoWhy 12:59, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

(ec)"Any good faith disagreement"—but many times removals, while in good faith, are not based on reasons outlined by the criteria. For example, a G11 removed with an edit summary of "This is a notable subject." If something is unquestionably spammy, and nobody has time anytime soon to rewrite the article, do we really need to keep the brochure around just because there is a removed speedy tag? I can see how generally we don't want people adding back A7 when someone thinks the article does make a claim of notability, or G11s when someone doesn't think it is spammy enough, or G6 if someone doesn't think the page should be moved, etc, etc, but I think these are exceptions, really. If an article is completely empty and someone removes the A3 with a summary of "this is notable" do we really need to start an AfD? Nobody is even willing to write a stub, but we can have an AfD? We just don't need this extra rule. We already have 3rr/brd/etc. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 14:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

The fundamental rule for all CSD is "no practical chance of surviving a discussion" at AFD. Notable subjects do have a practical chance of surviving a discussion at AFD. Therefore "it's notable" is a perfectly on-topic reason, exactly as outlined by the #1 criteria for any page being ineligible for CSD.

The more I see, the less sympathy I have for G11s on notable businesses. We seem to have some taggers whose definition of "exclusively promotional" is not very different from "is about a business, and doesn't qualify for G10". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Just to note, we have sometimes had issues with established users removing CSD tags for no discernible reason; in one instance, we actually had to ban the editor in question from, among other things, removing CSD tags (the editor's name shall go unmentioned here unless necessary). And this was someone who had been here for over a year at the time. In those cases, people invoked IAR to restore a couple of particularly obvious G11 tags; I like the idea of adding something to this page, but it shouldn't be viewed as a suicide pact. There are exceptions, which SmokeyJoe outlined above, and we don't have to throw common sense out the window. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:51, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, this might be ok with the "plausible reason" clause (ie, not just "good faith"). If the removal is way out in the weeds it can be reverted. Although, I think this is already covered and such an addition would be redundant. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:27, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Overly restricting re-adding of templates is a bad idea. Situations change. Non-admins or even admins, who do not have a perfect understanding of certain deletion criteria - particularly copyvio and BLP issues - may decline a speedy that really needs to be done. Certainly the addition of the same tag over and over again would be disruptive, but the removal of the tag can be equally disruptive. When we come upon a tagged article we are going to look at the edit history. Most of us are not; however, going to make a detailed search for sock puppetry or assess the relative experience of editors. We're going to see if the article meets the criterion it is tagged with. If we notice that there is a history of retagging, we are perfectly equipped to deal with the situation. That's what the tools are for. Making more rules creates more bureaucracy and more chance that someone will take the article to DRV simply because of a point of procedure that we ourselves have created.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 14:06, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I just don't agree. The purpose of speedy deletion is not to delete articles without any inconvenient procedural limitations or to get sort-of spammy pages off Wikipedia under some sort of WP:DEADLINE. The purpose of speedy is to delete pages that are so obviously inappropriate that there could be no good-faith disagreement on the point without bureaucratic procedural limitations. Once you've got good-faith disagreement, it does not qualify for speedy deletion. The policy already says this: "no practical chance of surviving discussion" and "Speedy deletion should not be used except in the most obvious cases".

If you've got a disagreement from uninvolved people about whether it is "obvious" that the given page meets the CSD criteria, then it's not obvious—even if one admin thinks Wikipedia is better off without it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I think those sections of that you mention, along with our other guidelines/policies about edit disputes/etc, are probably enough then. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:58, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Considering the continuing violations an absolute statement is needed: Any good faith objection other than by the original author stops an AfD on that issue, except for libel and copyvio--and it is hard to imagine a good faith objection to either of them, unless the original speedy was not correct in the first place, & if so, certainly it should be discussed. Puppetry is merely an example of an objection not in good faith; and, if a tag is removed purely by error, common sense will deal with it. In situations not covered otherwise, snow AfDs can be very fast. There are very few of them--usually the matter is actually disputable. DGG ( talk ) 00:53, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

It looks like we more or less agree that some procedural clarification is appropriate. Would someone like to sort out which of the above seems to be the best and please add that? If not, I can do it myself some other time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:17, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Something like

If speedy deletion has been declined and the speedy deletion tag removed by an uninvolved editor in good standing who indicated a plausible reason for the decline or removal, the page should not be re-tagged for the same type of speedy deletion. The page could be tagged under another applicable criterion, e.g., if it is later found that the page is a copyright violation. The fact that speedy deletion is contested is proof the page is not a candidate for speedy deletion under the contested criterion, since speedy deletion is by definition only applicable to pages where deletion would be uncontroversial.

Debresser (talk) 17:43, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

That wording seems fine. But I'll add that I sometimes add multiple criteria when I think they are applicable. We might also want to encourage this. No sense to listing multiple criteria one after another. And while an admin can decline the nomination for the reason an editor offered, there is nothing to prevent them from deleting under another criteria. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:37, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that is implicit in the proposed text. In addition, note that from the discussion above it follows clearly that a speedy may be declined not only by admins. Which is why the word "admin" isn't in the proposed text. Debresser (talk) 19:47, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Strongly disagree with that wording, "The fact that speedy deletion is contested is proof the page is not a candidate for speedy deletion under the contested criterion" is fine for A7, but not for example G12. Also take the case of a musical recording tagged A9, the article on the band is created so the tag is declined as it no longer meets the criteria, later the band article is deleted, then the musical recording article should be able to be re-tagged. Mtking ^(edits) 22:43, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

But if the reason for removing the tag is not plausible, eg the article tagged with G12 really is a copyright violation, then you can put the G12 back/delete the article. The A9 example feels like a reasonable exception that we don't even need to write down? As another example, this was not a plausible removal of a G11, since the edit summary said "it's a notable organization". It would be ok to revert the removal in that case. I do have a problem, though, with the "uninvolved editor in good standing" clause. Why does the editor have to be uninvolved? What does "in good standing" mean? thanks, ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:13, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I disagree: Articles about notable hospitals don't get deleted at AFD, and thus "it's notable" is a plausible indication that the article doesn't qualify for CSD. Please think about the meaning of the policy's most basic rule: "Speedy deletion is intended to reduce the time spent on deletion discussions for pages or media with no practical chance of surviving discussion". For better or worse, a group of American hospitals has basically a 100% chance of "surviving discussion", no matter how awful the article is in its first drafts. The "plausible reason" needs to address the whole situation, not the NPPer's specific reason for speedying it. For example, if the NPPer tags an article as spam, and it's not sufficiently spammy—but it is a copyvio—then there are no "plausible reasons" for not speedying it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Is "I wrote the text on the xyz website and am happy to have it here" plausible? However without the correct procedure being followed should still be deleted. I agree with the issues of what is a "uninvolved editor in good standing", uninvolved seems to be needed for G4, otherwise you could have the situation that an article is deleted at AfD, recreated by one of the keep !voters and then the G4 tag removed by another of the keep !voters we then get down to wiki-layering over is the edit sum they used "a plausible reason for the decline". I think we are trying to find a solution to problem with one editors action over Remergence which looks like it is going to be deleted unopposed at the resulting AfD. I think maybe a different approach may be needed, maybe by mandating the use of {{Oldcsd}} and have the relevant CSD tag check for its presence on the talk page and a bit like PROD checks for an AFD and then change it's display to warn any reviewing administrator that this has been contested in the past, then let the reviewing administrator decided what to do, we could also ask the Twinkle developers to also check for it before allowing repeat tagging.Mtking ^(edits) 00:19, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

No, that wouldn't be plausible; if it's an unambiguous copyright violation then it's still an unambiguous copyright violation. My experience is that articles that have been prodded in the past frequently do not carry the prod tag anyway, so I don't imagine Oldcsd is going to have any better luck. I agree with you, though, that this addition is ultimately useless and will likely not prevent much bickering. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 01:01, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I might accept that response, but only for the very shortest amount of time that I think it might take the new editor to get this confirmed by the Volunteer Response Team, and only if it seemed likely that the editor owned the website (e.g., a personal website or a small business, but not a multinational corporation, a government website, or a major charitable organization). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

In my experience most all such pages are also deletable as G11, and the wording I use in explaining this to the contributor is "even if you give us permission according to WP:DCM, the tone will not be encyclopedic and the material will not be suitable." sometimes adding. "It would be easier to rewrite." DGG ( talk ) 00:20, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

"No hope" articles

I've added (and slightly expanded) Debresser's text to the lead. I'm not sure that the lead is the ideal place to put this, but I thought it was a reasonable place to start. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I think the rationale sentence at the end sort of overstates things and misses the point of CSD a bit; I tried to reword it. What do you think? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:13, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I've re-added a statement (albeit much shorter) to the same effect. The entire point of CSD is that it is only for pages that will always get deleting in deletion discussions, and it's important to say this. Thryduulf (talk) 01:58, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

CSD is not only for articles that will for sure get deleted, so it is important not to say this. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 04:14, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

From your edit summary, ""X is a great skateboarder" is a valid A7 but at AfD we would look for notability and it might turn out he's a famous skateboarder. The same article on him that is empty would have the same result." Actually, that would be deleted at AfD every time. An improved article might not be, but that isn't the same thing - just because a different article about the same subject wouldn't get deleted, doesn't mean that the present article wouldn't be. Were "X is a great skateboarder" to go to AfD then it would be snow deleted pdq. Thryduulf (talk) 09:09, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually it's my edit summary. That's demonstrably false. At AfD we search for sources and often they are added in by participants. I can't imagine how you could have possibly participated at AfD and not seen this not just once in a while but many times (though I see you have participated in numerous discussions). Anyway, the point is that A7's heart, no assertion of importance or significance, does not require anyone to do any check for sources; at AfD it is the opposite. We are there to make a decision on the merits, and so we do. Notability does not require sources to be present only to exist. Here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seth Jehangir Hormusji Kothari; Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brant_secunda. These took me about one minute to find with a nuanced search. A7's standard by definition allows us to delete articles that may in fact be on notable topics but say nothing to indicate that notability. The language you added covered not just A7 but all the CSD, so the same analysis is applicable to others, e.g. empty or no-context articles may have content or context added and so no longer qualify under A1/A3.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:13, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Erik, I thought some of your changes were okay, but here's what the watering-down bit looks like from where I'm sitting:

• You say that a contested CSD is "not obvious". (I agree.)
• The first sentence of the third paragraph says, "Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases".
• But you don't want to state the pretty simple, unavoidable, logical conclusion that contested CSDs (which are "not obvious") should therefore not be deleted through CSD (a process not to be used in cases that are "not obvious").

If a contested page is "not obvious", and nobody is supposed to speedy a non-obvious page, then why don't you want to just say, straight out, that nobody is supposed to speedy these non-obvious/contested pages? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:57, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I think my version was pretty much saying just that (as long as the rationale for contesting was reasonable). I'm not sure what you take issue with? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:53, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

My complaint is that you deleted the last sentence, which directly said this. Multiple people have said that leaving the conclusion as an exercise to an inexperienced editor is causing problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the section should have been added as the above discussion did not reach a consensus on a wording that would avoid wiki-lawyering over what constitutes an "uninvolved editor" and/or what was a "plausible reason", the current wording is even worse, as it does not address the issue of a creator logging out to remove the tag or creating a obvious sock to do so or in the case of recreation two non-socking editors working in tandem to bypass DRV. This section has only been added as a result of one editor edit waring over a tag on an article that at the resulting AfD was deleted unanimously, rather going to suggest that he was indeed right to tag it in the first place (no excuse to edit waring over it). So until these points can be addressed, I am removing the section. Mtking ^(edits) 16:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it makes much sense to say "uninvolved editor". It can't be the creator, obviously, unless we are trying to radically change things. But for what we're doing here who cares if the editor is involved or not? And I thought "plausible reason" would satisfy concerns about someone removing a {{db-attack}} when it was still an attack, or removing a {{db-spam}} with a non-sequitur rationale like "it's notable" or something. "does not address the issue of a creator logging out to remove the tag"—we don't need to address this and things like banned users, etc here, I think. Again, though, I think we don't need to add anything at all; I think our edit warring guidelines/etc cover these scenarios already. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:53, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Restore disputed section?

This was the original text that was removed:

If speedy deletion has been removed by an editor other than the page's creator who has indicated a plausible reason for the decline or removal, then the page should not be considered an obvious case and should not be re-tagged for the same type of speedy deletion, except in the case of blatant copyright violations or explicit attack pages where no good-faith editor would find the objection credible. The page could be tagged under another applicable criterion, e.g., if it is later found that the page is a copyright violation. If there is a dispute over whether a page meets the criteria, the issue should be taken to deletion discussions rather than being deleted as a speedy.

It seems to me that this paragraph already addresses the cases of blatant copyright infringement and attack pages. Given that extensive discussion - not just in the sections immediately above on this talk page, but over years and years - suggests that this is definitely the consensus position, can we discuss restoring this text to the policy?

What precisely is the objection to it?

Thparkth (talk) 11:19, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

• oppose currently. My objection is that it is too wordy, too woolly and leaves things questions like what is a "plausible" reason and, especially, who is a "good faith" editor too open to wikilawyering. I agree the sentiment reflects long-standing consensus, but the wording is too loose. Given consensus is that WP:CSD criteria should be applied to the letter, it is very important that we get the wording as tight as possible. Thryduulf (talk) 11:40, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
• oppose If an admin believes a page to be an attack on a living person, he should delete it. If a non-admin has the same belief, he should tag for deletion. The fact that someone objects, and that hypothetically someone might in good faith (but entirely erroneously) find the objection credible, does not interfere with that. Pages seen as BLP attack pages (or negative articles without references) get killed as quickly as possible. If the judgement is contestable, we have a discussion about that after deletion, because over-caution and undeleting later is a small price to pay to ensure the swift removal of bad stuff. I could perhaps support this if attack pages and BLP violations were excluded entirely.--Scott Mac 11:53, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

What about this as an alternate wording? It's no shorter, but it is more imperative and explicitly addresses Scott Mac's objection.

When a speedy deletion tag is removed in good faith by an editor other than the page creator, the tag should not be replaced, and the article should not be deleted under that criterion. Such a removal demonstrates that doubt exists regarding the applicability of the tag to the article, and indicates that the deletion requires further consideration and discussion outside of the speedy deletion process. Administrators may, at their discretion, delete articles which constitute an urgent legal hazard (blatant copyright violations and explicit attacks against individuals) regardless of the previous removal of speedy deletion tags. - Please note, this is not currently under active consideration - in this section we are discussing the original wording above. Thparkth (talk) 18:05, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Thparkth (talk) 12:00, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

• 1) "legal hazard" is not the reason for BLP enforcement. "legal hazards" can only be judged by lawyers. We remove BLP violations and attacks because it is the right thing to do -whether the WMF could be sued is neither here nor there. 2) Many stupid things are done "in good faith". That doesn't mean we should give them credence. Certainly if there's reasonable doubt as to whether the CSD apply, then don't re-tag, but otherwise do so, and explain to the de-tagger their error. If indeed you notice. Are we really saying that if someone creates an article on a "village bungee jumping champion", it gets tagged for A7, someone removes tag with "bungee jumper is an assertion of notability", then someone a month later sees the article and tags with A7, that it should not be deleted? That's daft.--Scott Mac 12:28, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Well look, it's obvious you are at odds with the prevailing interpretation of how CSD works, so this may not be a productive discussion, but in my opinion you are fundamentally wrong to say "explain to the de-tagger their error" - the fact that it has been de-tagged means there IS reasonable doubt. End of story. Makes no difference it's about Nobel Prize-winners or school bungee-jumpers. Difference of opinion among uninvolved editors = take it to AfD. You, as an admin, don't have opinions that are magically more correct - you also get to take it to AfD. Thparkth (talk) 12:46, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

As far as "legal hazard" is concerned, I feel you're splitting hairs a little, but I would welcome an alternate wording for that sentence that you could live with. Certainly, if it's not urgent, it doesn't need to be speedily deleted against good-faith disagreement. Thparkth (talk) 12:50, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

• Copyright violations contested in good faith by other users should be taken to wp:CP, no matter how blatant they might seem to you. There is no danger to the project once the article is blanked by the copyvio template and thus no reason to ignore procedure. Yoenit (talk) 13:00, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:CP is limited to copyright issues involving text; speedy deletion policy has to cover images and other files also. WP:NFC requires administrators to speedy delete non-free images lacking fair-use rationales for example, regardless of speedy tagging. Thparkth (talk) 13:10, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

If it is supposed to cover files you should say so, the proposed text above currently states "delete articles which constitute an urgent legal hazard". F5 deletions are also an extremely poor example, as there is a 7 days waiting period on them, so those are definitely not "urgent" deletions. Yoenit (talk) 14:22, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Good point. Thparkth (talk) 14:36, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Interestingly, I had an opportunity to see the wording above in action. I think it probably needs a bit of tweaking, but overall it's trying to be reasonable. Someone came to the Village Pump saying that each time they made a redirect (WKQX to WWWN), another editor was adding a speedy tag and it was getting deleted. The tagger's rationale was that WKQX was now assigned to a new station. However, the new assignment was to a 'dark' or non-transmitting station (non-notable). I removed the tag, thinking that the paragraph above was the rule (first time I'd had to really read this page), and he restored the tag saying my reasoning wasn't plausible enough. So we had our tiny edit war over that. Eventually it went to a fairly quick 'Redirects for Deletion' and was kept. -- Avanu (talk) 13:52, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

This actually happens quite a lot. There are several articles in existence now only because I removed a speedy deletion tag and then had to argue tooth and nail with an admin to prevent them from deleting the article prior to an AfD where the article was kept. At least one of those articles is now a good article. Thparkth (talk) 14:00, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

That an article is speedy deletable has nothing to do with whether it would be possible to write a good article on the subject. If I write an article that says "Joe T. Smith is a cool dude who likes maths" it is speedy deletable as A7, it may well be that Joe T. Smith is actually the world's leading mathematician, and a year later someone writes the featured article. Regardless, the speedy deletion was correct, because we have decided we don't allow stubs that don't explain why someone is important. Similarly, "Bob T. Smith is a murdering criminal{citation needed}" gets nuked as an attack - it doesn't matter that Bob is actually a famous serial psychopath, who merits a good article. So, the fact that good articles were later written on a subject matters nought to the validity of the earlier speedy deletion. Speedy deletion does not preclude someone recreating a valid article.--Scott Mac 14:30, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point of the example I gave. The articles in question were not deleted and rewritten, because they were sent to AfD instead with a "keep" result. Thparkth (talk) 14:35, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Both versions, for the reasons highlighted above, I also wish to add another example with why the wording won't work, take the example of a word for word re-creation of a page deleted at AfD that is tagged, the tag is removed by another editor who !voted keep at the AfD with an edit summary of "This person is notable", the arguments would then revolve around "is this a valid rational". I would only consider a wording that made it clear that if an administrator had previously declined the speedy then another administrator should not delete the target unless they had discussed it with the first administrator (an exception to that would need to be made for attack pages). But leaving it to editors to try and decide what is a good faith rational from an uninvolved editor is open to so much interpretation that it will undoubtedly led to more drama. Mtking ^(edits) 14:14, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

  Another example would be a Non-Free company logo uploaded for a article that was deleted following a expired PROD, the logo would then be tagged F5 ( Orphaned non-free use images). However the day after the article was deleted the creator of the article asks at WP:REFUND for the article to be restored, this is done and the F5 tag removed from the logo (as it no longer applies) the article is listed at AfD, where it is deleted as not-notable, the proposed wording above would then preclude the logo being tagged F5 again. Mtking ^(edits) 15:09, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

  So "situation that definitely no longer applies" is a "plausible reason" in your mind? It's not in mine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:09, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose for all the reasons I already stated in the previous thread. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:12, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support, since this is the normal practice and will not result in the doomsday scenarios proposed above. We expect our admins to use their best judgment; that's why we have the "loose" wording that indicates they should use their judgment. An admin can easily decide, for example, that no excuse in the world could be considered "plausible" justification for a word-for-word re-creation of an AFD-created article, a copyright violation, or an attack page. (Go ahead: just try to come up with a reason to remove such tags that wouldn't get you laughed at.) Along those lines, I think that calling out explicit exceptions for re-tagging is unnecessary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:09, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support, conditional on the language of a "plausible reason" remaining, which to me addresses all of the oppose bases I've seen.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:23, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

  Do you mean you oppose this as worded? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:04, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

• Support In my experience, of looking at thousands of these, such removals are almost always in good faith, and most of the time I agree with them completely. In fact, about 3/4 of them I do not think should be deleted at all, and the others the deprodder has usually sent by themselves to AfD or prod, so I don't have to. Any reliable regular contributor can fairly evaluate that there is a possibility an article can be saved--what it takes an admin for, is to be sure that they can't be. Even without going into the specifics, no admin is going to fail to delete undoubted and unfixable copyvio or serious BLP violations or other libel or clear vandalism. That's all that's needed. Everything else can wait for discussion. Obvious if one seriously stretches things one can find odd-ball examples: that's why we have IAR. It's a bad idea to make a code that covers everything possible, as if a bot were going to do it.
• Support Clearly the intent of speedies is to delete things which any reasonable editor would find worth deleting. Otherwise we have a discussion. Hobit (talk) 17:45, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
• oppose—it needs something along the lines of the "plausible reason" clause. I'm sure there is a better wording, but I think the removals should be accompanied by something to address the tag in order to be "binding" like this. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:04, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

  I don't know if this will change your mind, but we are specifically discussing the original wording here which does have the "plausible reason" clause. I have struck out my alternate wording to make it clearer what we are supporting or opposing :) Thparkth (talk) 18:06, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

  Ah; I see. I'm still opposed, I think, because of the sentence "If there is a dispute over whether a page meets the criteria, the issue should be taken to deletion discussions rather than being deleted as a speedy." Per my concern about the "plausible reason" clause, the dispute must not simply exist, it must be grounded in reality. As an example, if an article is totally spammy, and the disputant just says "this subject is notable", then the article still ought to be deleted. Now, if this were reworded to make that more clear, I would still be "weak oppose", because I don't think we need this; we already have guidelines/etc for dealing with edit disputes. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:03, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose If a page satisfies one of the criteria for speedy deletion then it should be deleted. This is quite unlike a PROD, where the situation is "we will wait for a week to see if anyone objects, and if they do we can discuss it: if nobody objects then there is no need to hold a discussion". A speedy deletion is supposed to cover those cases where the reasons are so compelling that we don't need to wait to see if anyone objects. All the time speedy deletion tags are removed (a) by disruptive editors trying to prevent the deletion of spam, vandalism, hoaxes, etc, and (b) by good faith editors who are not well acquainted with the standards for speedy deletion. In both these cases it is common for the article to be speedily-deleted. To try to have every such case subjected to a deletion discussion would be an unhelpful increase in bureaucracy and a waste of everybody's time. If an article is clearly spam, clearly a hoax, clearly makes no reasonable claim of significance, or clearly falls under one of the other speedy deletion criteria then it should be possible to delete it, without some individual being able on a whim to make us keep it while a discussion goes on for a week. The speedy deletion criteria are those which consensus has established are such pressing reasons for deletion that an administrator can delete without discussion: it makes no sense to say that that consensus does not apply if one person says not. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:45, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
  • However there are also many cases where the removal is because there is a good faith dispute as to whether the criteria applies or not. For example if one person says "this makes no credible claims of importance" and then another person says "actually, the claim made in the article does credibly assert importance", in which case it should go to a discussion because it does not uncontroversially meet the criteria. It is these cases we are primarily discussing here. Thryduulf (talk) 15:49, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
    • That misses the point. Speedy deletion means "delete this right now, it meets the criteria". If the person making that call happens to be an admin, then the article gets deleted. Sure, often the decision is disputable, wrong, or more likely the article does qualify for speedy, but it would also be possible to fix it up. If that's the case, then anyone can start a discussion on the admin's talk page, and (if neccessary) at DRV. Mostly if someone gives a good reason to reverse a speedy, the admin will give it consideration. Speedy tags are not a debating mechanism, they are simply a mechanism for a non-admin to flag up to admins an article that should be speedied. If it gets speedied, then good faith discussion can occur just the same as if an admin had deleted it without a tag. There's no difference.--Scott Mac 15:57, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
      • Yes, Scott Mac is spot on, and Thryduulf has indeed missed the point. If someone removes a speedy deletion tag, and an administrator agrees that it is not an unambiguous case, then of course the administrator is not going to delete the page. What is at issue is whether an admin is prevented from deleting the page in cases where they judge that the removal was unjustified, and the case is indeed an unambiguous one. That sort of judgement is what administrators are appointed for. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:17, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. There is no blanket rule for what to do in this situation for a good reason, such things should be decided on a case-by-case basis. A user might dispute a tagging in good faith and still be totally wrong. As I've mentioned repeatedly now, we already have an appeals process for specific cases at WP:UNDELETE. A formal ironclad rule is neither needed nor desirable. The underlying assumptiopn here seems to be that if anyone removes a tag, an admin who comes by later and deletes anyway is automatically wrong. That's nonsense. Admins are much more likely to have a solid understanding of CSD since it is probably the area whewre we face the most criticism. Not knowing one tiny detail out of all the various criteria has torpedoed many an RFA. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:33, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

That would be lovely if it were true, but in fact the average admin who is not heavily active in the speedy deletion process certainly has less knowledge of the criteria than the average non-admin who is actively involved in it. Of course it goes the other way too... expert admins shouldn't be overly bound by groundless tag removals by the ignorant. I think I'm coming round to the idea that "no ironclad rule" is indeed the best option. Thparkth (talk) 18:32, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

• Support in general, as nuanced guidance on how to implement the idea that CSD is not for controversial or discussable topics--those should go to AfD. The wording proposed, which includes some of my verbiage, was very much a work in progress at the time it was reverted and the page protected. I am entirely certain that we can more succinctly capture the essence of what needs to be said on the matter. Jclemens (talk) 23:03, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Schools & A7

Does the exception to A7 for schools apply to all educational institutions? There is a difference in the use of the term between North America and the UK and Ireland. In North America, it tends to refer to educational institutions of all levels, whereas in the UK and Ireland, it does not refer to third-level or further education institutes. I think the criterion should be altered to clarify what is meant by schools. Quasihuman | Talk 22:58, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Schools are just an example of the things that are not covered, the list is not exhaustive. A7 only applies to those subjects that are explicitly listed as being within scope. As always with CSD, if there is any doubt whether an article fits the criterion then it doesn't. Thryduulf (talk) 01:48, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

My understanding was that schools are explicitly mentioned because they are organisations (a topic which normally falls within A7), the deletion of which are thought by some people to be automatically controversial. If that is a correct assessment, clarification is needed as to what is meant by schools. If the criteria is left in the current state, I would use the widest possible interpretation of the word, but it is a shame to keep language which has significantly different meanings between two major variants of English. Quasihuman | Talk 10:09, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Reading Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Criteria for Speedy Deletion A7, about this issue, it seems that the discussion there includes third-level institutes. See proposal below.Quasihuman | Talk 10:55, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

There are also those art and music schools for kids that operate after school hours, I would not really consider these as schools but more like some business. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:09, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps, but I don't see the problem with extending A7's school exemption to them. We aren't likely to get all that many articles about these sorts of businesses that aren't spam but still manage not to tell the reader why they should care. Cheers. lifebaka++ 14:35, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposal

In A7, that (e.g. band, club, company, etc., except schools) be changed to (e.g. band, club, company, etc., except schools and third-level colleges) to avoid the ambiguity described above. Quasihuman | Talk 10:55, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Silly. Third-level colleges are schools. There's no ambiguity here. If the subject is a place whose purpose is to teach things to other people, then it is a school. Would this really be a plausible conversation in the UK:

Person 1: Hey, what school do you go to?

Person 2: Right now I'm enrolled in the University of Dublin.

Person 1: That's not a school, that's a third-level college.

Third-level college is not even a redirect, I highly doubt there is such an important distinction drawn in the UK between schools and third-level colleges to the extent that we need to explicitly list both of them in the A7 criteria so that people don't get confused. —SW— ^speak 17:10, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

• We could just change "school" to "educational institution" instead (I don't think deleting universities under A7 would be a good idea either). Hut 8.5 17:14, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) From School: "In the United Kingdom, the term school refers primarily to pre-university institutions" when I read A7 first, I assumed it applied only to 1st and 2nd level, OED says that a school is an institution for educating children. The "Read this before proposing new criteria" bit above says in point 1 that " most reasonable people should be able to agree whether an article meets the criterion" this is not true for the current criteria. The wording in my proposal may be clumsy, and I am not particularly tied to it, I am open to clearer suggestions.

Quasihuman | Talk 17:25, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

• I think Hut 8.5's proposal fixes it quite nicely. The reason why schools are excluded from A7 is not (only) that their deletion is most likely controversial but (also) because long-standing consensus is to redirect/merge non-notable schools to the articles about their district or town and no speedy criterion should allow the deletion of a subject that would not be deleted at XFD. Regards SoWhy 17:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
• Agreed, Support Hut 8.5's version. Quasihuman | Talk 17:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support Hut 8.5's proposed wording change. Thryduulf (talk) 22:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support Hut 8.5's change as well. I was considering exactly the same change myself. Dcoetzee 06:39, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support Hut 8.5's new wording proposal. Oddbodz (talk) 09:51, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support Hut 8.5's proposal. —mc10 (t/c) 21:01, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
• Due to the complete lack of opposition here, I've made the change. Cheers, everyone. lifebaka++ 13:21, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Now can somebody create a suitable redirect so that third-level college is no longer a redirect? --Orange Mike | Talk 16:29, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Would Tertiary education be a suitable target? Thryduulf (talk) 23:53, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. Done. Cheers. lifebaka++ 23:58, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Require article-page or article talk page notification for proposed deletion under F6

At Wikipedia talk:Non-free content (I'm not sure which page should be the primary location for discussion) I have proposed a required notification on the article page or article talk page for when a nonfree image used in the article is proposed for speedy deletion for lacking fair-use justification (CSD #F6).

I propose this due to a situation that occurred today when non-free images were deleted from two of my watchlisted articles for lacking fair-use justification. Both images had been uploaded by users who have not edited for several years and both images had been in the articles for several years. There had been no notification in the articles or article talk pages and presumably no one noticed the user-talk-page notices to the uploaders (a talk-page notice to a user who has not contributed since 2007 or 2008 is unlikely to be seen by anyone; indeed one of the user talk pages had no page views in the past month except for the proposed-deletion notification), but active contributors interested in these articles might have wanted to contribute free-use justifications if they had been alerted to the problems. I don't believe either of the images qualified for fair use (and because I don't have much interest in either article I had never delved into the histories of the images), but it seems to me that needless drama can ensue in other situations like this -- when images disappear from articles without alerting interested current contributors who might have been willing and able to provide the documentation needed to prevent their deletion.

Since I believe the more prolific taggers of non-free images lacking fair-use justification use tools to generate the notifications, it should not be difficult to provide notification on the article talk page. --Orlady (talk) 15:44, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Maybe rather than making this a rule we could just find a bot operator to do it. Now that I think of it that is what User:BetacommandBot used to do. Maybe a less... problematic user could use the code to make a new bot. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:00, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

CommonsNotificationBot (talk · contribs) performs a similar function for images nominated for deletion on Commons. Kelly ^hi! 19:29, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm the maintainer of CommonsNotificationBot. This is trivial to implement - I have filed for approval for the bot to also run on WP:CSD file categories as well. Hopefully it will be speedily approved :) --Errant ^(chat!) 00:52, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, ErrantX! --Orlady (talk) 00:55, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

That was "speedy"; Anomie gave it the OK so I will implement this in the next couple of days - stay tuned! :) --Errant ^(chat!) 01:05, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Followup: I see that the bot is indeed adding notifications to article talk pages - sweet! Best news I've seen all day. --Lexein (talk) 15:19, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's completely true. It is providing notifications for files proposed for deletion at Commons, but I don't see evidence of notifications for files proposed for deletion on this Wikipedia. --Orlady (talk) 17:49, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Here's a bit of good news: Talk:Mara Clara (2010 TV series) in re File:MaraClaraTV10.png.
I scanned down Special:Contributions/CommonsNotificationBot while mousing over the File:*.* link for images not linking to commons:File:*.* A good percentage of WP files are in the mix: out of 500 recent bot contributions, 124 were WP images, and 328 were Commons images (grepping for 'title="File:' and 'title="commons:File:' respectively. --Lexein (talk) 18:34, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Nice. --Orlady (talk) 22:55, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Copying footnote #3 to A7

Would anybody mind if we duplicate footnote #3 to A7? This is the one that says to give people ten minutes before you assume that there's no context or no content. Given that we've never had a rule that says "the very first time you hit the save button, even by accident, your article must clearly indicate notability for the subject", does anyone mind if we recommend waiting ten minutes before assuming that an indication of notability won't be promptly forthcoming?

(The footnote says, "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.") WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I could have sworn when I proposed that footnote text that it was for A7 as well. Support.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:49, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I am now on the fence and leaning towards oppose unless some very clear qualifying language was drafted, and I can't think of any that would not result in a mess.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:03, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

• strong support. I think this should apply to G2, G4, G11, A2, A7, A9, A10 and F7 (second bullet point) as well as A1 and A3. Thryduulf (talk) 23:30, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  I think this list is reasonable. It might make sense to not have the footnote and say something at the top like "Any page that is not actively harmful, like an attack, or is otherwise potentially on its way to being useful content should not be tagged within 10 minutes or so after creation." IOW, express the idea rather than maintain a list. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:38, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  How is waiting on an A10 going to help matters? Monty₈₄₅ 23:41, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose there are many A7 articles that are obviously never going to pass the A7 criteria, delaying tagging them does nothing but cause a delay in deleting articles that really should be speedily deleted. Example, "Monty who lives at 1400 Pennsylvania ave, small town USA was born in 1999. He is a really cool guy, and is the most popular kid in his class." There is no way that such an article is ever going to pass A7. Unlike an A1 or A3, where the problem is there isn't enough information, with an A7 there is often more then enough information to make a clear determination. If the article is borderline, and could with a few more details pass A7, then sure, wait awhile, or just tag it for notability and give it a few days, but a mandatory wait across all A7 is counter productive. I would support it if it more clearly emphasized waiting till you can make a fair determination, rather then an always wait 10m rule. Monty₈₄₅ 23:39, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  What is the harm of waiting 10 minutes? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:53, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  Because editors don't always have ten minutes to waste on every pointless article? Pointless nonsense doesn't need protection from the terrible deletionists. Moreover it helps to notify serial pointless article creators before they get started with a huge list of all their friends that such things aren't desired. On the other side of the coin, there's no reason to leave the page up at all. i kan reed (talk) 13:29, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

  You don't have to sit there and twiddle your thumbs until the 10 minutes is up. The "get started with a huge list" argument seems like a non-issue. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

  What I mean is I don't always have time to be on wikipedia for 10 minutes straight. It creates a huge maintenance burden. I'd rather have an expiration timer on the template and still be able to tag it. The requirement creates tedium to protect bad articles. This won't help anyone. If you can point to one example of a good article with a non-notable start, this would be a conversation worth having. i kan reed (talk) 17:29, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support - for A7 only, at this point. The next edit to the "Monty the most popular kid in his class" article might mention that Monty is a world champion chess player, for example. There is absolutely no reason these articles need to be tagged within seconds of creation - waiting ten minutes would do no harm at all. Thparkth (talk) 23:52, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  See, I think that if it has gotten to the point where the article is talking about how popular the kid is in class, the article would have already mentioned anything that would be a claim of importance, and an 11 year old is very unlikely to be important enough to pass A7. Sure its possible they may come up with that later, but I think it is exceedingly unlikely. And then many people believe identifying information on young minors who are not notable should be promptly deleted. In my example, we are talking about a 11 or 12 year old. Monty₈₄₅ 23:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  "the article would have already mentioned anything that would be a claim of importance" - there is no way to know that, and no benefit to assuming it. Thparkth (talk) 03:32, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - "Jenny is an average person born in 2002. She likes talking to her friends" will have no indication of importance for a very long time. 10 minutes will not do any good. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 00:07, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
• (edit conflict)Oppose Firstly it risks the page being over looked, those checking new pages will end up having a two stage processes, first checking for attack, copyvio etc then having to re-visit the page ten mins later to check for notability, this will either mean the cheeking will only start at t+10 mins or will be overlooked. Secondley if it is tagged and notice put on creators talk page, this alerts the editor to try and fix the issues, if we wait, this increase the likelihood they have logged off. Might support an advisory to administrators that they should wait 10 mins after creation before deleting a A7 tagged article if it allowed for the obvious cases to be deleted. Mtking ^(edits) 00:12, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

For practical reasons we need to let the newpage patrollers make an immediate call on the article. But it would be best if that immediate call had no effect for a little time when it is a goodfaith article. I think we could achieve that with a bit of programming that delayed the tagging of an article and only added goodfaih speedy tags after 60 minutes, and only if the article had not been subsequently edited. I suggest we combine that with an additional couple of colours at special newpages. Perhaps Blue for tagged for deletion and Green for having a time-delayed tag. After the 60 minutes either the CSD tag would be added to the article, or if it had been edited in the meantime it could revert to yellow as unpatrolled. This would solve the A1 A3 overhastyness and reduce some of the other biteyness aspects at NPP whilst still handling badfaith stuff PDQ. ϢereSpielChequers 16:58, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I would, in principle, support a system where for the first first 10 mins after an article was tagged for A7, A1 and A3 the CSD tag was say amber, rather than red with a different message pointing out that unless the article is brought into line with requirements then the article would be considered for deletion, the wording could be more new-editor friendlily at this point. Only after the 10 mins had gone past would the template revert to the current look and feel and the page added to the speedy deletion category. Mtking ^(edits) 21:00, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

If we could make the CSD templates less snarky then in my view we should do so anyway, not just for the first ten minutes. I've seen templates given to goodfaith users who haven't learned our notability rules that use the same sort of symbolism that we use in final warnings and attack page templates. But just giving a gentler template would still mean the editor wasn't given ten minutes before their article was tagged. To really improve the situation we need a time delay so that an editor who improves their article in the first hour doesn't get templated at all and the editor who doesn't has their article templated afterwards. ϢereSpielChequers 20:44, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Some of the opposition baffles me. Perhaps the problem is not reading the footnote. It says that a ten-minute delay is "suggested as a good practice". Do we all understand that there's a difference between "absolutely required" and "suggested as a good practice"? Does anyone actually think that it's horrible to suggest a ten-minute delay, just in case the next edit shows a remarkable change? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily 100% against this, but if we do that we do need to emphasize the consider part in the same way Special:NewPages says "consider patrolling from the back of the log", not "you should" or "you must". Even for A1/A3, it takes a bit of judgment; for most, I will wait 10 minutes, but if I see what's obviously an attempt to correspond with someone, or it looks like playing around but isn't really vandalism, I tag it on sight. As described below, there are some instances where the extra time will help, but some where it will do nothing but be a waste of time. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 07:09, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support. It's a footnote- a suggestion- not set in stone. I share the same concern about blatantly speedy-deletable articles (they're all blatant, but I'm referring to ones that can't under any circumstances be made into an article that will survive A7), but even with a footnote you could immediately tag them for speedy deletion. This would be intended for those borderline cases where they could be improved and survive A7 without scaring away the article creator first.--Slon02 (talk) 22:05, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Do admins even honor the rule as it applies to A1 and A3

It is hardly the first time I have seen it happen, but I just watched an admin delete (not just tag) an A3 in under 3 minutes from creation. What is the point of delaying the tagging of an article if it will just be deleted before the time window is up? Perhaps there should be a focus on getting people to follow the rule as it applies before considering expansion of scope. Monty₈₄₅ 00:53, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

What do you suggest we do? Note that I added language about this to the top of newpages in December 2009. I also made {{uw-hasty}} and {{hasty}} and though it's not easy to check, my impression is that they haven't gotten a lot of use. This is a very hard area to check compliance but I don't see how expansion is affected by lack of compliance. Also, the fact that you can find examples of non-compliance has no evidentiary value as to what effect it has had.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:03, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

As a non-admin, without view deleted I can only really point at anecdotal evidence, but whether the rule is being widely followed is relevant to expansion. We don't want to tell new users to do things one way, only to have them get frustrated when it turns out lots of people are doing it a different way. Monty₈₄₅ 01:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand your point. I think what you said is quite aptly analogized to "there is a lot of littering at two area parks, ergo, we shouldn't post signs at another park about littering being prohibited because lots of people are doing it."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:24, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

there are always justifiable exceptions. I have always argued for confining IAR within very narrow limits with respect to speedies. But for a7, sometimes the article will be so pathetically impossible that there is no possible reason to not delete it right away--we had one yesterday apparently written by a proud parent about his child in kindergarden. For A1 and A3, I cannot immediately think of similar examples, but there have been,, though it is hard to know what might come at the next edit. DGG ( talk ) 01:22, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree. But applying any policy language reflexively is the wrong way. What I mean by that is that I see no conflict with saying that articles should not be tagged with A7 moments after creation and doing what is right on a case-by-case basis. We certainly disagree about IAR, as previous discussion has demonstrated. You bring up a good point—it's almost always going to be true that an article that meets A1 and A3 at the moment of creation should not be tagged immediately, but for A7, it's not so clear cut. So if we are to apply a similar provision to A7, it really would need to have qualifying language, and I think to do so properly would require far too much explanation for it to be anything but murky. Some goods points are made in the preceding section as well, and so I'm no longer so sanguine about applying it to A7 at all.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:59, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think we agree about this. Whether ewe call it IAR or just good judgment, special cases should not be provided for by detailed CSD rules--there are just too many possibilities, and we can deal with them ad hoc as necessary. ` DGG ( talk ) 07:00, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth

Back in 2008 I marked this for speedy deletion. The creator removed the tag (before we had a bot to prevent that) and edited it to say this. Eventually it looked like this before it was AFDd and redirected. Oh boy did I feel like an ass. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:30, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Don't. I would have tagged it myself, and I would have followed up on the tag. There was nothing to indicate that this was a fictional character, and anyone not familiar with the TV series would have thought that this is about a real-life person. Wherever I see the words "up and coming" in the article, that's a big red flag. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 17:10, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Blanchardb, above. But while we're on the subject of FWIW, this is a perfect example of hiding vs deletion in a class of cases. I'm glad that the entire history of this article is preserved (due to it being redirected). I strongly wish deletion worked the same way (in some cases), so that a) editors can see at which point an article went wrong, and b) reconstruction (where appropriate) is simplified. Of course some material must be expunged, I get that. But in many cases, I see value in something other than deletion, such as history-only view and edit locking. That is, only viewable as history, not as a live article. I base this view partly on the intended openness of Wikipedia - all content and processes are visible to all (except for certain narrow exceptions). Deletion of articles at AfD, followed by having to make a special request to an admin or higher for userfication or emailing of the deleted content, seems to fly in the face of intended openness. I have the strong sense that this has come up before, and it will come up again... --Lexein (talk) 06:19, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it has come up before, although I couldn't off the top of my head point to any specific discussions. The point you are making though is regarding what should be viewable to a non-admin user after an article has been deleted (currently just the log entry), which is a matter for a different place, probably one of the village pumps (given the controversy over a current request to allow OTRS agents to view deleted content, I can guarantee your proposal will be at least as controversial though). This page is about when a page may be deleted without prior discussion, regardless of what deletion means for non-admin users. Thryduulf (talk) 11:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I know where I am. Fair enough, though. Thanks for the pointer. It was merely a passing thought. Now back to the regularly scheduled CSD discussion. --Lexein (talk) 12:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Warning templates

Hi. The last paragraph of this article's "Criteria" section currently contains this: "All speedy deletion templates thus contain in their body a pre-formatted, suggested warning template to notify the relevant parties of the nomination for speedy deletion under the criterion used." I've just tried db-g8 and db-talk and in neither case did that "contains a template" bit seem to be true. Or I am missing the point? - it wouldn't be the first time. Can someone please explain? Thanks and best wishes 138.37.199.206 (talk) 12:24, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

{{db-g8}} and {{db-talk}} are for criterion WP:G8 and thus they are only used in situations where a notification would be pointless - usually because the user knows of the deletion already since the parent page was deleted or tagged for deletion. For example, if you tag a page for A7 and the talk page for G8, the user will get a notification for A7 already and it's clear to them that the talk page, that depends on the article, will be removed alongside it. Another example is {{db-g6}} (and the other WP:G6 related templates): Maintenance can only be used if the deletion is completely uncontroversial and thus there is no need to notify people about it. Regards SoWhy 12:35, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the explanation. It does leave us with the fact that the project page text is simply wrong - whatever the explanation, it makes a simple claim: "All speedy deletion templates thus contain in their body a pre-formatted, suggested warning template" - which is simply untrue; as you have explained, they do not. It might be nice to fix this. Also, I must say that I found this confusing - I put a speedy template on a G8 type page, a Talk page which existed without an article. I didn't necessarily know what was going on and there was no obvious explanation of how it got to be there on its own but I felt it was courteous to inform the user who had put the (admittedly garbage) page there. Given that we generally speaking want people to help with tasks like this, I'd have thought that some more clarity here would help. :) Thanks and best wishes 138.37.199.206 (talk) 06:36, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

The sentence has been made true. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 06:58, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Wow, that was fast, thanks very much. Nice new version. I feel a small things-happening-quickly sound effect such as shazooom or a simple groink! is called for here. Thanks again 138.37.199.206 (talk) 08:25, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Speedy noms for categories

Hi, I'm not all that familiar with how speedy noms work for categories rather than articles. Basically I want to object to this proposed speedy [5] - what happened here is that the category used to have a quite large number of articles in it, but was emptied out by User:Hoops gza who then nominated it for speedy deletion based on the fact that... the category is empty. This smacks, at least to me, of a bit of gaming the system. If he thinks that the category should be deleted he should properly nominate it for deletion, rather than, what looks like to me, these sneaky tricks.

So, can I remove the speedy tag and put all the articles that were removed from it back in (which is roughly what would happen with a unjustified PROD for an article)?Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:22, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you can object to the speedy tag in that manner as you are saying the speedy criterion was applied in bad faith. I would though start a CfD about it though. Thryduulf (talk) 23:51, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I would certainly start a cfd; this particular one is likely to be considerably controversial. Better to deal with it by a discussion. In the meantime, I removed the speedy tag, and put an "underconstruction" tag on it to give you a chance to restore the articles, which I think would be better done before the cfd so we'd have something substantial to discuss. Please, however, be careful to put back only the ones that are quite certain; it will make your case stronger. DGG ( talk ) 02:25, 10 September 2011 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 02:21, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, ok. Is there a quick way to see what articles were in the category, say, a month ago? Otherwise I'll have to prowl through Hoops' contributions and find them. Also, since I created a category for Nazi leaders assassinated by Polish resistance (which Hoops said he agrees with), some of those articles have been moved into that category. Volunteer Marek  10:33, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Somewhat OT but I see a similar situation with non-free images sometimes. A user in good faith perceives that there is a problem with a non-free image but feels that the simplest and most expedient way of dealing with it is to orphan it and then delete it as F5. Same with cats. Find what you perceive as a problem cat, just depopulate and delete it. The problem is that both would appear to be "dirty pool" to an outsider who notices this and objects. This then causes bad feelings as the objector focuses on the "dirty pool" action instead of whether or not the object (image or cat) in question was problematic. In my view, if one feels in good faith that an "object" (article, category, image, or what have you) has the potential to cause harm "right now" then just IAR delete it with a clear explanation as to why. Yes yes I know, deletion should be "IAR free" but doing it this way is preferable to "gaming the system" and is more honest. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 12:34, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Quite right, deletion should be entirely IAR free. There is no point in having speedy critera otherwise. If you think something has the potential to cause harm right now, and it doesn't meet any speedy deletion criteria, and nothing short of deletion will remove the potential for harm, then nominate it for deletion, explicitly mentioning the potential for harm and bring it up somewhere like WP:AN/I to see whether others agree with you. If they do then it will quickly be deleted by consensus. In almost every case I am aware of, what one editor perceives as having the potential to cause immediate harm are actually not urgent (or sometimes even entirely harmless). For example, F5-7 allow unused or unexplained free use files or those with an invalid FUR to remain on our servers for 7 days, so deleting them can hardly be described as "urgent". In all cases where articles are removed from a category, or images removed from articles prior to nominating for (speedy) deletion, it should be a requirement to list these uses in the nomination. Thryduulf (talk) 13:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposed clarification to A3

Hi all, today in IRC we were considering whether an incomplete article (Devastator (video game)) was eligible for A3. At the time, it contained only an infobox giving the article's title, publisher, year of release, and genre. The A3 criterion reads "this criterion does not cover a page with an infobox with non-trivial information." The deleting administrator considered this information to be "trivial." Clearly, if this information were written in prose form, the article would not be an A3 candidate (or even an A1 candidate!), but a stub, suggesting that the deletion didn't reflect the spirit of the rule ("no content"). I would like to clarify this sentence to emphasize this point, something like this:

"This criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria (consists only of images, external links, and/or a rephrasing of the title)."

If this is too long, I'd go for the shorter:

"This criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria."

Feedback/suggestions welcome. Dcoetzee 05:52, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I think this line:

"Similarly, this criterion does not cover a page with an infobox with non-trivial information."

Should be changed to read:

"This criterion does not cover a page containing only an infobox unless the contents of the box consist only of external links and/or a rephrasing of the title."

A bit more specific change. --Odie5533 (talk) 06:02, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

That would mean that an article consisting of an infobox with only an image would not qualify for A3. Dcoetzee's version is better. Hut 8.5 10:08, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Support "This criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria.". Thryduulf (talk) 13:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd also support Dcoetzee's short proposal, maybe with the addition of the word "sole" (i.e. "...unless its sole contents..."). On a side note, so far I thought that the "non-trivial" in that sentence clearly meant "information that would allow it to be deleted if it were prose". Regards SoWhy 20:10, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I like Thryduulf's (your name is hard to type) version since it matches the mentioning of the article wizard. --Odie5533 (talk) 05:43, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Since consensus here seems fairly clear, I've gone ahead and made the change. Cheers. lifebaka++ 15:54, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that any article containing only an infobox, trivial or not, should either be deleted or moved to the creator's userspace if not edited for a certain length of time, let's say 48 hours. No matter how informative an infobox may be, an article isn't an "article" unless it has some prose in it. I see no point in keeping these around for a 7 day PROD/AFD cycle if their creators have "left the building". If deleted it should be "without prejudice" and refundable. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

If the infobox does contain non-trivial information then it's very easy to add one sentence to the article to make it a valid stub. We shouldn't be deleting pages over issues that are so easy to fix. Hut 8.5 16:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Description pages for Commons images - F2

Some time ago [6] F2 read ...includes empty (i.e., no content) image description pages for Commons images - now it's been expanded to include any image description pages, whether empty or not. This means that pages which categorise commons images on en-wiki, e.g.File:Welshhighrailmap.jpg, are being tagged for deletion. Is this correct? —An  optimist on the run! 08:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd say no but I'm unsure as to why it was changed. That wording was added in May 2010 based on a WP:AN discussion and removed in September 2010 based on no objections to changing it back to a 2006 consensus (see here). I'd support restoring the May 2010 version though, it seems to make more sense. Regards SoWhy 09:23, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with SoWhy. WikiProjects use categories on things like featured pictures or other media to keep track of them. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 14:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Categorization of featured pictures is exempted from F2. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 20:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

This discussion comes up too many times... but if I'm not mistaken, a few months ago, the consensus was that all files hosted on Commons will have their local description pages deleted. The only exceptions were featured pictures, valued pictures (which is no longer in use), DYK images, etc. General categorization, like Category:Images of California for example, were to still be deleted per F2 because the categorization effort was being unnecessarily doubled—categorization such as this should be done solely on Commons. — ξ^xplicit 18:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Explicit. Consensus supports it, and there is no need to double categorization. Categorization of commons files needs to occur at commons, not locally on en.wikipedia. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 20:20, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Could any of you please link to that consensus? I seem to have missed that discussion. Regards SoWhy 08:25, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with SoWhy. Content classification belongs on Commons, but en.wp project classification belongs on en.wp. Any categories here that are content-categorising images can be dealt with by CfD, and then the image pages speedily deleted per F2 if there is no project classification. Thryduulf (talk) 20:43, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Could someone find the discussion that said FP/FS/DYK/etc. categorization is exempt from F2? It might help clarify that section a little other than covering all image description pages for Commons. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 00:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm having some trouble finding it. Said discussion might have taken over at WP:ANI, but trying to find it is truly hell. I'd assume Sfan00 IMG (talk · contribs) would have a better idea, he's usually the reason these discussions begin. — ξ^xplicit 21:02, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure it was a WP:ANI dissucssion, it may well have been an informal convention developed on user talk pages,

between myself, other contributors and admins. My understanding was that F2 exemption covered local templating/categorisation for the purposes of :

• Featured/Valued content
• DYK's
• badimage
• Material subject to a deletion debate at Commons

If someone want's to formalise that including :

• Images which are SOLELY used by local Wikiprojects and do not have scope for wider use

feel free :) Sfan00 IMG (talk) 11:16, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Redirect speedy delete criteria

R3, technically, applies only to recently created redirects, and Criterion R2 allows deletion of cross-namespace.

However, there are cases where it would make sense to speedy delete even ancient redirects, which are not cross-namespace. May I suggest a Criterion R4: "Nonsense redirects". This would cover cases where the name of the redirect is unambiguously a different subject than the one directed to E.g. Apple redirecting to Orange, if the page history of the redirect does not include a better page to redirect to.

We could (if it's not thought to be too dangerous) also include those annoying redirects where the redirect wasn't entirely nonsense, but the article redirected to has no information on the subject of the redirect. (for instance, if Coliseum redirected to Rome, but Rome didn't even mention the Coliseum anywhere in the article)

I'd imagine the exact wording of the criterion will need hashed out, but I think you'll agree that, with the appropriate caveats and exceptions, it's an obvious case for speedy (it's pretty much just explaining how to apply G1 to Redirects.). 86.182.20.107 (talk) 11:37, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I can see where those redirects shouldn't be in place because they make no sense, but in your examples the fix is easy, change the redirect so that it goes to an appropriate page. Do you have any actual examples where we should delete the redirect rather than changing it? GB fan 11:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, I was trying to give easy-to-understand ones. The specific situation that set me thinking about this was Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2011_September_13#Research_and_innovations_in_Ayurveda, which isn't really QUITE R3, as it's rather old, but was certainly well within the spirit of the CSD rules.

That's probably the sort of things these will be. Very specific redirect titles that no longer fit the content of the article they redirected to. Should probably say I noticed afterwards that the target article was a WP:COATRACK - it had big sections you'd presume were on-topic, then you looked closer and found out the research was done by someone other than the article's topic, so it's a redirect now. 86.182.20.107 (talk) 16:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

How many of these are we seeing at RfD per day, though? Regardless of whether or not such redirects are always deleted for those reasons (which I also want evidence of), it's best not to expand the criteria unless there's a demonstrable need. lifebaka++ 17:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Looking through the current nominations at RFD I don't see anything that would fall into your proposed criterion. It doesn't look like it is a common problem and RFD should be able to handle any that show up. GB fan 01:39, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

As one of the most regular users at RfD, I can clearly say there is no need for this. Old redirects that no longer meet the subject of the article come up only very rarely (I'd be surprised to discuss three in a month) and not all of them result in deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 19:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Unnecessary talk pages

What criterion would something like this (note the article redirect) fall under? Even if that specific page can be simply turned into a redirect, what about talk pages in general? I noticed there's no criteria. Voxii (talk) 13:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

If they have no relevant history, such as that one, they can be deleted using G8. Or they can be redirected to the talk page of the same thing the mainspace redirect redirects to. Cheers. lifebaka++ 13:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Thx. Voxii (talk) 13:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

To clarify a little, relevant/meaningful history should not be deleted or removed outright. Discussions should be left in place or archived, and important tags like {{Copied}} should be left alone. Depending on the WikiProject, banners may be removed or altered to match the article redirect. Flatscan (talk) 04:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Continuing the discussion of WP:NOT

I think we should also consider applying WP:NOTESSAY as a CSD criterion. (Don't immediately walk away, please, I am aware of previous proposals.) Take an article like Doctor or engineer. It's at AfD right now, and it hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of surviving, but there's no immediately applicable CSD criterion. I believe this fits the criteria described at the head of the talkpage for new CSD proposals:

1. Objective: Such articles are always snow deleted. There are articles floating around that are written like research papers rather than encyclopedia articles, but they're still basically informative, and they don't get taken to AfD because they're either salvageable or not in desperate need of salvaging, and editors are smart and recognize this. The criterion would have to be written very specifically, perhaps using the term "persuasive essay" or "personal essay," but this is a class of articles that we as a community recognize as needing to go.
2. Uncontestable: see "Objective," with specific enough wording the rule will target those articles for which a strong precedent for deletion exists.
3. Frequent: I think this comes up at AfD often enough to warrant a speedy, and will try to get some numbers if anyone wants.
4. Nonredundant: I do not see a criterion that already covers this, which is why they always end up at AfD. (Which is to say, I don't think there's precedent to apply G11 so broadly.)

–Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:41, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The Doctor or engineer article appears to be speedily deletable as a copyright violation. But the example made me think of Tiger versus lion, which might have been thought to be a snow-delete as an OR essay when it looked like this, but the result ended up being really not so clear as first thought. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 03:11, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know that "Tiger versus lion" is a good example. The article in its current state bears absolutely no resemblance to the old version which was nominated for deletion; it might as well have been deleted and rewritten from scratch. Similarly, an article that qualifies for G11 might be on a worthy topic, but the content itself is inappropriate by community consensus. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:39, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Some other examples, then, that editors had flagged as NOTESSAY: Standard of living in the People's Republic of China (see AfD); Deepwater oil spill prevention (see AfD); Internet search engines and libraries (see AfD); Improving memory (see AfD). Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 02:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

With the exception of the oil spill one, all of these seem to be what I referred to as research papers. They still fail WP:NOTESSAY, but they are sourced and informative, so it's better to have them in bad shape than to delete them. I think we can write a guideline to exclude them, or rather to include only pages that are easily recognizable as personal essays. (And, as for the oil spill one - that was kept because it was rewritten into an encyclopedia article, which bears no resemblance to the version that was nominated.) –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:25, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Something similar is discussed above, at #New_criterion_-_WP:NOT. →Σ _{^talkcontribs} 03:26, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw, but it seemed to be focusing on specific NOT criteria other than this one, ie. NOTNEO, etc. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:39, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Looking over AfD logs for the past few days, I couldn't find but a few examples of pages that were being deleted for violations of WP:NOTESSAY, and I'm fairly sure they were not all the type of page you're talking about. Ignoring the other merits of a proposed criterion, I'm not comfortable expanding the criteria for something that shows up at AfD less than a dozen times a week. This is a level that AfD can handle. lifebaka++ 15:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

And I took a look through the 98 articles in Category:Proposed deletion as of 14 September 2011, and there was not a single one being proposed for deletion related to it being an essay. Unless that was an unusual day, Prod can handle the frequency of these essays too. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 23:26, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:06, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Funny. In the past few days I've prodded two essays. →Στc. 01:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

An average of 1 per day is hardly teh frequency level that requires speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 10:30, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

A7 "uncontestable"?

The instructions at the top of this page suggest that speedy deletion rules should have an uncontestable character. That doesn't seem to be the case in practice. For example, this or the plethora of these. The "importance" part is interpreted by some as a more stringent, and more subjective requirement than "significant coverage in reliable sources". Perhaps some further clarifications are necessary? Have mörser, will travel (talk) 03:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The first incarnation of "John_Maxson_Stillman" mentioned that he "was a pioneer of the history of science in the United States" which an assertion of importance, so A7 would not apply. You could have contested it successfully without removing the csd tags yourself. As creator of the page you are not allowed to remove the tag. In the second case those articles are stubs on educational institutions, so they do not fall into any of the speedy deletion criteria. Jarkeld (talk) 04:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

An assertion of importance or significance is a very different test to "significant coverage in reliable sources". Speedy deletion is only for certain types of commonly occurring article where the community has agreed that AFD can be bypassed and admins can delete without a debate over each article. If you are discussing whether or not a set of references constitutes "significant coverage in reliable sources" then it is unlikely that speedy deletion would apply, though other routes to deletion might. ϢereSpielChequers 17:41, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

New CSD - T4 Unused userbox that is more than 30 days old

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I'd like to propose a new CSD category: Unused userbox that is more than 30 days old. WP:MfD is cluttered with these at the moment, see: Wikipedia_talk:Miscellany_for_deletion#Unused_userboxes --Surturz (talk) 07:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• Good idea, but citation from mentioned page may be interesting ("I see no reason to delete any of them. Someone some time might want to use them. Why delete them? However I can not be bothered to !vote on every single item. --Bduke[odp] (Discussion) 00:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)")Bulwersator (talk) 07:58, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Not a good idea imho. Userboxes are clearly a field where we have and had many different opinions and thus it would not be a case where we can assume that such pages are always deleted at mfd. Just like Bulwersator wrote above, there are good reasons to keep them even when they are currently not used. Regards SWM (SoWhy[on]Mobile) 11:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. MfD is "overwhelmed" at present because a large number of such templates have been nominated - but this is not a long-term pattern, and indeed, there isn't a clear consensus that we should always be deleting those templates (as the commenter in the link you gave pointed out). Anyway, the criteria you suggest isn't very useful; a template that a single user has transcluded for years, but which is accidentally or temporarily removed from their user page, and which they intend to re-instate, would be speedy-deletable, and that is not a desirable outcome. If we could identify templates which "have been unused for more than 30 days" that would be much more useful, but as far as I know that is not possible. Even then, your proposal would run afoul of the usual problem with templates - templates which are designed to be substituted rather than transcluded should not be deleted based on link count. Overall this criterion is designed to solve an infrequent problem, and would produce undesirable deletions - so I don't think it's appropriate as a CSD. Thparkth (talk) 11:23, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose until there is consensus that "unused" is a deletion criterion at all, it is utterly inappropriate to have it as a "speedy" criterion. Thincat (talk) 16:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Why should they be deleted users may wish to use them in the future. As above unused is not a deletion criteria. So no need for a csd for this unless unused becomes a deletion criteria. Warburton1368 (talk) 18:45, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons everyone has already said. -DJSasso (talk) 18:54, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose MFD is fine for the purpose, and as others have said above they may be used in future, there is no hurry to delete. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:55, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose if MFD is cluttered with unnecessary attempts to delete things for no good reason, the solution is surely some sort of speedy keep procedure not a speedy deletion criteria. ϢereSpielChequers 20:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

  What a good suggestion! I wish I had thought of that. Thincat (talk) 21:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:MFD is one venue where WP:NOHARM can be a valid argument. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 03:52, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose as instruction creep and completely unnecessary. If a userbox is unused, check to make sure it's been added to the correct listing of userboxes. It may just be that no one other than the creator is aware of it. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:32, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I think it's pretty clear that there won't be consensus to add this to CSD. Most of the arguments made above however belong to the current MFD discussions and especially to the MFD talk page discussion Surturz cites in his proposal. Although I commented on that talk page and proposed to close those current discussions procedurally, I do not think it would be canvassing to ask all who expressed interest in how such pages should be handled to head over to the discussion at WT:MFD instead, since the discussion is misplaced here. Regards SoWhy 06:59, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose: I support the deletion of unused userboxes, but they shouldn't be speedily deleted because that doesn't give anyone a chance to start using them. If they go to MfD, and the creator is notified, the creator, everyone watching the userbox page, and everyone looking at MfD have seven days to decide whether they want to use it or not. If anyone uses it, the "unused userbox" nomination doesn't apply, and the discussion should be immediately closed. Dynamic|cimanyD contact me ⁞ my edits 14:53, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. I'm one of only 4 Wikipedians using {{user off-island suburbs}}, and the other three are very occasional editors. It is somewhat likely that so few people might simultaneously get rid of this userbox by moving across the bridge, and if that happens then the speedied userbox will be made unavailable to anyone else who wants it. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 05:44, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

T3 ?

How long has T3 been written as though limited to duplicates? It used to be unused templates, including duplicates. As currently written, orphaned and unused templates must go through Prod or Tfd. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 21:26, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, since it was proposed in late December 2007. The wording was tightened a bit in early January 2008 (see same discussion link) and has been stable ever since. Cheers. lifebaka++ 04:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Suggested automated behavior

• Geely GE (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Take a look at the history on this article.

• 2011-06-19T09:33:07 Nominated for speedy deletion under A1 by Island Monkey (talk · contribs). [7]
• 2011-06-19T12:24:47 Speedy deletion declined by me [8]
• 2011-09-19T02:08:33 Nominated for speedy deletion under A1 (again) by Androids101 (talk · contribs) [9]
• 2011-09-19T06:06:54 Speedy deletion declined by Vejvančický (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) [10]

Doubtlessly, Android101 was not maliciously re-nominating. In three months, he or she simply forgot to check the article history for previous nominations.

Question: Should SDPatrolBot (talk · contribs) have automatically declined the second nomination? Given that I had previously declined the CSD nomination, the bot could know that there is at least one revision in the history that does not fit CSD criteria, which necessarily precludes speedy deletion: even if the current revision is speedyable, previous revisions are not, and so reverting is better than deleting.

Thoughts? causa sui (talk) 17:13, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not sure that this sort of thing happens frequently enough that a bot is really needed. If a bot were to be made, it would need to try to identify socks from legitimate editors, as new editors have been known to sock to get around the current page creator revert functionality. It should also only apply to the declined CSD criteria, if someone tags the article under a CSD criteria that has not yet been rejected, the bot should let them. Monty₈₄₅ 14:35, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

  Thanks for the feedback. Since CSD moves so fast (it has to), it's hard to say how much it happens without doing research. I'd like to see that research but until then we have only guesswork. My thinking is that the easiest way to find out would be to program the bot to do it. :o)

  To the second point, this was discussed previously and I'm not sure it makes sense. When I look at a tagged article, and I think the tag doesn't apply but another one does, I speedy the article under the rationale that I think fits best: I won't procedurally decline a CSD like a grumpy schoolmaster saying "Try again, and multiplication tables five times." What that means is that if I declined a CSD tag, it's because I think the article is not speedyable at all, and so I'm effectively saying that speedy deletion of the article is controversial forever and future nominations should be sent to AFD or else reverted back to the revision where I declined to speedy it. causa sui (talk) 15:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• That's not always the case. Suppose an article on a company is tagged under G11, which is declined. Three months later someone notices that the article is copied from the company website and tags it for speedy deletion under G12. In this case the re-tag is entirely valid and the article should be deleted. If anyone did write a bot to do this then many speedy deletion criteria would have to be exempt (G6, G7, G8, G12 and possibly G4, G5, A5, A10). Hut 8.5 15:56, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• It would be possible if the bot didn't decline but simply flagged, e.g. a template saying something like: "Note to reviewing admin: A speedy deletion nomination under criterion X was previously declined. [link to nominated revision], [link to declining revision]". Thryduulf (talk) 10:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Not that we should have to but if everyone used {{Oldcsd}} the bad ones of these, retagging under the same criterion, would come up less often (though I have not seen it a lot).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:10, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I like Thryduulf's suggestion a lot. Would this really cause any harm? causa sui (talk) 19:55, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposal for speedy deletion criteria for products

I have been finding quite a number of articles on WP about products and have I have been putting many of them up for deletion. The PRODs and AfDs sometimes result in clear cut deletion and sometimes a protracted discussion. Given the large numbers of product articles scattered throughout WP the energy, the inclination, and time needed to assess these articles it would be preferable to have a speedy deletion criteria for products. This has been discussed here before but in my opinion the arguments against such a proposal have been largely unsatisfactory.

Another reason to speedily delete product articles is because WP is an encyclopaedia rather than a product catalogue or listing of a company's products. Also, the number of cheap, common, commodity products with a short useful life, is huge, so in order to add, maintain and assess such a vast list would be very difficult. There is also the chance of SPAM by stealth occurring by unscrupulous editors adding articles that appear to be NPOV at face value but their existence on WP is in reality a promotion for the product.

Having large numbers of articles about products is completely outside the bounds of what a reader would expect in an encyclopaedia. Even though WP is not paper is it also not a complete exposition of all information. There is no prescriptive notability guideline for products but WP:PRODUCT suggests deletion or merging for less notable product articles. In AfD's editors have sometimes been using the argument that if a reference exists then that is sufficient justification for an article. It is generally easy to find references for products since they are often reviewed in newspapers and the trade press.

I would like to propose that, as well as individuals, animals, organizations, and web content, the A7 criteria should include products (with the exception of books). Criteria A7 works well since there is a clear-cut case can be made for deletion or retention. There is no reason to suggest that this will not work for products. Where it is not a clear-cut case the speedy deletion request is easily rejected by the admins. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:06, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Some recent discussions

• Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_37#Proposal:_Let_products_fit_into_A7
• Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_39#Minor_edit_-_A7_.28products.29_and_F5_.28nonfree_imagery_in_deleted_articles.29
• Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_39#Products

---

Discussion

• I'm afraid that potentially notable products will be deleted as a result of this. Intuitively, when you write about a person, you say why they are important. If someone has written an article about a person that does not indicate in anyway why that person is important, it is extremely likely they are neither important nor notable. With a product it is different; if I were to write about a product without specific knowledge of Wikipedia policies, I would write what the product does, and maybe who makes it. But it is very possible that in writing what a product does, I may fail to say why a product is important. To the extent that there is an overload of useless products, it is largely things like social networking websites, or software available from app stores, both of which are already subject to A7 as being web content. To the extent that a product is sold through conventional distribution channels, I don't think speedy deletion is going to be a good fit. Monty₈₄₅ 14:47, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with speedily deleting "potentially notable products". Notable products on the other hand will not be tagged for speedy deletion and if they are the admin will decline it. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

A potentially notable product should be deleted only after a deletion discussion, just like a potentially notable person. That is why a mere claim of importance is enough to save an article about a person from deletion under A7, however as mentioned above, potentially notable products are much less likely to include such a claim as an article about a potentially notable person. Monty₈₄₅ 15:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• I think you yourself have given us the best reasons to oppose this proposal. Not only did you kindly provide links to previous discussions, all filled with tons of good arguments as to why this is a bad idea, but also your proposal itself says so. Let's see, shall we?
  1. "The PRODs and AfDs sometimes result in clear cut deletion and sometimes a protracted discussion."
     To put it another way: AFD and PROD are not always clear in handling those articles and there is indeed a genuine need to discuss some of those articles throughly. A speedy criterion would not be able to determine when such discussion is required and when it isn't, so discussion should not be bypassed. Again, although it seems to be less clear to some editors, PROD is already a mechanism to handle articles where the question whether discussion is required is unclear, so it's exactly the right tool for these articles.
  2. "Given the large numbers of product articles scattered throughout WP the energy, the inclination, and time needed to assess these articles it would be preferable to have a speedy deletion criteria for products"
     Non-argument. What you are saying is basically "We don't have the manpower to handle them, so let's just nuke them instead". By the same logic we would have to delete more and more articles randomly each year as the number of editors dwindles - a state in part caused because many are disillusioned after their articles are speedy-deleted.
  3. "This has been discussed here before but in my opinion the arguments against such a proposal have been largely unsatisfactory"
     You are entitled to your opinion but your opinion alone is irrelevant for this decision. The only thing relevant are arguments.
  4. "because WP is an encyclopaedia rather than a product catalogue or listing of a company's products"
     That non-argument would also apply to iPod, Windows, Coca-Cola etc. Just because products are included does not make Wikipedia a product catalogue. If the products are subjects for an encyclopedia and handled like such subjects, they should not be treated any differently than others.
  5. "the number of cheap, common, commodity products with a short useful life, is huge, so in order to add, maintain and assess such a vast list would be very difficult"
     See above (#3), just the same non-argument in different words
  6. "There is also the chance of SPAM by stealth occurring by unscrupulous editors adding articles that appear to be NPOV at face value but their existence on WP is in reality a promotion for the product."
     See above (#3). That risk exists for any article we have but it's not a reason to delete anything. If such an article is brought to AFD, it would be kept but rewritten. Speedy should never ever delete anything that would be kept at AFD.
  7. "Having large numbers of articles about products is completely outside the bounds of what a reader would expect in an encyclopaedia"
     Again, you are entitled to your personal opinion and I often valued it but in this case, it's irrelevant. What readers expect is up to the reader to decide, not you or me or anyone else. If it meets the rules, it stays and the reader may decide whether they want to read such an article or not. Also, that's a non-argument to nuke all product articles, so it's really irrelevant when discussing a speedy criterion to handle certain products only.
  8. "it also not a complete exposition of all information"
     I'm afraid that's a straw man. No one argued that it was and we have rules that clearly say what Wikipedia is for and what it's not.
  9. "There is no prescriptive notability guideline for products but WP:PRODUCT suggests deletion or merging for less notable product articles" (emphasis added)
     The first part is another straw man, since a.) A7 is not about notability and b.) the notability guideline for products is Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) and Wikipedia:Notability. The second part is a perfect example as to why the proposal is flawed: Since merging is often the preferred option, there should be no policy to delete such articles instead (that's why schools are exempt from A7 for example).
  10. "In AfD's editors have sometimes been using the argument that if a reference exists then that is sufficient justification for an article. It is generally easy to find references for products since they are often reviewed in newspapers and the trade press."
      It certainly is an argument as to why an A7 criterion for products would mostly fail - since coverage in reliable sources is almost always an indication of importance or significance.

Regards SoWhy 15:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• (ec) You pretty much ruled these out for speedy deletion with your comment "sometimes result in clear cut deletion and sometimes a protracted discussion". Speedy deletion is for easily definable groups of articles that always result in clear deletion decisions at AFD. Also when it comes to products we need to think of our readers, and not just the current ones but also the 4th millennia archaeologists consulting us to try and identify what they find in our landfills. ϢereSpielChequers 15:15, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Look up to the top of this page where the standards for new criteria are listed: "it must be the case that almost all articles 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. " Beeblebrox (talk) 19:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I am confused. What have I ruled out? What I am proposing is to avoid the wasted time in the clear cut AfDs that result in deletion. And it is the readers that I am thinking of both now and in the future. They are surely interested in the more notable products. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• While I think that with a limited scope, we could address most if not all of SoWhy's valid concerns, past proposals (see User:Fiftytwo thirty/Denied CSD Proposals) have shown time and again that a criterion for products is not going to happen. Some of the proposals I have listed at my user subpage have been to include products under A9, which would narrow the scope and address the fact that most unimportant products are merged. Remember also that "products" can have large scope, and for my purposes is restricted to non-creative products (Books, films, video games, ect. are exempt; software is not). I personally think that there is a valid need for this criterion, which would help to eliminate uncontested product deletions from babysitting at PROD and snow deletes at AFD. Likewise, I think it is a common occurrence in the New Page queue, more common than the current scope of A9. While I think an A9 extension is sensible, I just don't think consensus will be in is favor. --Fiftytwo thirty (talk) 20:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

No-one disputes that many product articles legitimately get deleted. The difficulty is coming up with a speedy deletion criteria that clearly and simply differentiates the ones that will close as near unanimous delete in 7 days time from the keeps, merges, redirects and closecalls. "I've looked into my crystal ball and seen the AFD close as clear delete next week" is perfect, but we can only implement that when we've issued crystal balls of acceptable reliability to our patrollers. Until they arrive, we can only implement this if someone comes up with a clear and simple test that predicts a group of articles that stand no chance at AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 21:49, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

The test would be the same as all the other A7 categories, It states, in bold text "does not indicate why its subject is important or significant.". -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately that test wouldn't work for products because as was explained above, a non spammy article about a product is less likely to start with why that product is important or significant than an article about a person. ϢereSpielChequers 06:41, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

@Alan, I don't support A7 deletions of products. It just doesn't make sense based on how we treat them. @WSC, yes, due to budget cuts, we cannot give each NPPer a crystal ball! In terms of this whole proposal, the issue for new pages and deletion is not the buttons we have to push but the people pushing those buttons. --Fiftytwo thirty (talk) 00:00, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Consensus is only a snapshot of a point in time. Given that it has been a perennial proposal is it the case that those watching this page are of a conservative disposition with respect to WP policy? -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Perennial proposals are alternatives that the community has rejected many times and for consistent reasons. If those rejecting a proposal do so simply because it is a change and it is either a new idea or an idea that has previously been rejected then it might be reasonable to describe the regulars of a page as being conservative as regards that policy, and I can think of a page where that does apply. However this page is pretty much the opposite of that, proposals get considered and people explain why they disagree with them. Occasionally some idea comes up where we can get consensus for change and that change happens. Most of the proposals that come here are from deletionists looking to make it easier to delete articles that they can't get deleted at AFD. As that is obviously out of scope for this page they sometimes get frustrated. ϢereSpielChequers 06:41, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• I had pre-empted opposition to my proposal. See http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2011-September/109417.html titled "Difficulty making structural changes to WP due to human nature?". -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

While I have some sympathy for your position (it would make some sense to apply similar criteria to products as companies, albeit with significant changes), I think you're going about this all wrong. That doesn't pre-empt opposition to your proposal, but instead applies a negative characteristic to people you disagree with while offering absolutely no evidence to support it. It also refers to changes to policy "however minor", but this would be a fundamental shift from previous policy so doesn't fit that description. And this is disingenuous in the extreme. Have you considered the possibility that your proposed changes to policy aren't being adopted because they're too radical to be useful? You do seem to have a worryingly high rate of incorrect CSD taggings. Alzarian16 (talk) 20:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd seen that posting but thought you were discussing a different area of policy making. To answer your query "Or am I trying to satisfy the readers of WP rather than editors" readers who search for an article and find it has been deleted are rarely well served by its deletion. So no a proposal to make it easier for deletionists is a disservice to our readers. ϢereSpielChequers 20:11, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

• I wholly support Alan's suggestion - even though it's a perennial discussion, consensus can change; there are just too many spam articles now for products, services, and web biz. However, I would guard against introducing any new CSD criteria until we have either found a way to educate the children who do most of the NPP, or made NPP into a user right for experienced users, or finally convinced the WMF to allow WP:ACTRIAL that was adopted by a heavily subscribed consensus. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:05, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

But how would you write a speedy criteria that differentiated between such articles that needed deletion and those we want on the pedia? Yes many articles on products get deleted, the difficult task is to write a clear simple guideline that newpatrollers can be expected to follow. Alternatively we need to change the rules - hence my suggestion elsewhere of a sticky BizProd. ϢereSpielChequers 20:11, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Namespace to mainspace

There is criteria for deletion of redirects from articles to namespace areas. Why is there not any criteria for the other way round (other than perhaps maintenance)? Simply south...... creating lakes for 5 years 18:52, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

When users are in article space, they expect to see... articles. Therefore a redirect from an article title to something that is not in article space is always wrong. The reverse is not always true. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:58, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

G4 and subsequent XfDs

The G4 criterion states, essentially, that a page deleted per a previous discussion can be speedily deleted after being recreated if it is "sufficiently identical" and "unimproved". So if the page looks like it did before deletion, and the concerns at the previous deletion discussion are still valid, the page can be deleted.

What the criterion does not state is what happens after subsequent XfDs. Let's say that an article is recreated after being deleted at AfD and looks pretty similar to the way it did before. This new discussion is closed as "no consensus". As our policy is currently written, I see no reason why G4 deletion is not still eligible. Technically, it can be speedily deleted even with a "keep" conclusion if the article is still identical to the way it appeared before, and the concerns at the prior AfD are still valid (possibly because they weren't even addressed at the new discussion).

Should the assumption be that any XfD after recreation that does not result in a "delete" conclusion makes G4 deletion invalid? Or perhaps the criterion should state that the most recent deletion discussed resulted in a consensus to delete? I suggest amending the criterion to make this clearer. I don't want to overcomplicate things but I ran into this situation recently myself. I actually was the one who did a G4 deletion after a "no consensus" AfD and felt that I was following the letter of the policy, but I'm still not sure that articles should be able to be deleted in this way. -- Atama頭 18:11, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the first assumption is correct. If the article survived an AFD, then its deletion should only be the result of a new AFD or DRV. If you did such a deletion, you possibly followed the letter of the policy but not its spirit. Any subject that was kept in a discussion should not be speedy deleted afterwards because speedy deletion is per definition the exception to the rule that all deletions should be the result of a deletion discussion. Deleting an article after it was not deleted at AFD essentially ignores the consensus of the debate in favor of the reviewing admin's viewpoint (so in that case, please consider yourself {{trout}}ed).

To sum it up: If the recreation happened after the article was deleted at AFD, G4 may apply. If the recreation was sent to AFD and kept there (either as keep or no consensus), then G4 cannot be applied. If there is support for it, I'd suggest we add that to G4 to clarify. Regards SoWhy 18:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Is there need for that verbiage? I don't see how anyone bright enough to become an admin could possibly misunderstand the way G4 is supposed to work. Deleting under G4 after a keep or no consensus Afd would be POINTy at best, and warring at worst. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 19:38, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Since Atama admitted to do such a deletion and I do not think he was doing it in bad faith, there might be some real confusion. Regards SoWhy 19:59, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Ack, did s/he? I thought this was a rhetorical question. The verbiage must be more confusing than I thought. It reads clearly to me, but if there is actual confusion over this, then yes, we need to copyedit so it is more clear. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 20:07, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Current verbiage

A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion. This excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version, pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies, and content moved to user space for explicit improvement (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy). This criterion also excludes content undeleted via deletion review, or which was deleted via proposed deletion or speedy deletion (although in that case the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply).

Suggestions to make this more clear? We could simply add a sentence which reads "any article which survives an Afd without being deleted does not qualify for deletion under G4." Or we could add it to the current last sentence: "This criterion also excludes content undeleted via deletion review, or which has survived an Afd without deletion, or which was deleted via proposed deletion or speedy deletion (although in that case the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply)." KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 20:11, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I did the deletion (and I'm a he :)). I didn't consider the deletion to be pointy, but of course I wouldn't, if I thought it would be I wouldn't have done it. My situation was this... Someone else placed the CSD request, I reviewed it and could not justify declining the request as our policy is written, so I deleted the article. I gave some thought about changing the wording and considered this; where it begins, "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion." Perhaps it could instead begin, "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via the most recent deletion discussion about the page." I assume that if an article or other page was nominated and kept, and nominated again later and deleted, G4 should apply even though it was once kept. I believe that the spirit of G4 is to assume that a current consensus of editors favors deletion and that a demonstration of a change in consensus (via a newer deletion discussion) would be necessary to change that assumption. If my assumption is incorrect or my wording is imprecise please correct me, thank you. -- Atama頭 21:13, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Also, adding to my confusion here was that the discussion was not closed as keep, but as "no consensus". If there is not a new consensus to keep, does that invalidate the old consensus to delete? I think it might be fair to say that if there is no consensus in a newer discussion, then the matter is "muddied" enough that speedy deletion would no longer apply. On the other hand, in another hypothetical situation what if the AfD were closed as "delete", and after deletion there was a discussion at DRV about whether the closure was appropriate and that DRV discussion closed as "no consensus", does the article stay deleted or is the deletion reversed? That's almost the same situation, I don't see a big difference between an article restored after deletion and subject to AfD, and a DRV about an article that was deleted via AfD, the process and consequences of each discussion is the same. So again, I am honestly conflicted about this. This why I'd like the policy to be clearer about this. -- Atama頭 21:21, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

"No consensus" at AFD means "No consensus to delete", not "No consensus what to do". If the community cannot decide whether to delete, no single admin should decide it for them. As for the DRV example, it stays deleted because "No consensus" at DRV means "No consensus to change the close", not "No consensus to delete". Since DRV only serves to check an admin's close of a deletion discussion, it does not influence the article's fate itself. Often people will say that DRV is not "AFD round 2" and that's exactly the reason why. Regards SoWhy 21:34, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

That's a good explanation, thank you. -- Atama頭 21:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Atama that G4 is valid if the most recent XfD resulted in delete. Adding "most recent" has been disputed in the past: see WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 39#G4 clarification (September 2010) and User:Jclemens/CSD-RFC (stuck RfC draft, November 2010). Flatscan (talk) 04:36, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Another previous discussion: WT:Deletion review#G4 (copied from Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 November 4#Carli Banks). Flatscan (talk) 04:37, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

You're right. My suggested phrasing doesn't cover that, does it? Darnit. Is there support for "most recent' now? (it has been a year, after all...) KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 16:23, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Once kept, NEVER G4-able

The above discussion has it backwards. Per the lead of WP:CSD "If a page has survived a prior deletion discussion, it should not be speedy deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations." Speedy deletion criteria are made to be brittle and "fail" to a full-blown XfD discussion. Thus, if an article is no-consensus'ed, then deleted at an AfD, and then recreated, why would that second deletion be automagic and able to take place without discussion? It wouldn't. Any deletion of any material which has survived an XfD at any point in its existence under CSD G4 is a non-policy-based deletion: that's the way it reads, and I think it's absolutely appropriate that it stay that way. If things are getting obnoxious with repeated recreations against consensus, then WP:RFPP is the way to enforce the community's will, not a one-admin decision. Jclemens (talk) 04:45, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Let me clarify: Your opinion is that if an article was kept 3-2 in 2004, deleted 15-1 in 2009 because we enforce policies better these days, and recreated with the exact same content as the 2009 revision in 2011, assuming no copyright issues, we should waste several community members' times again? NW (Talk) 15:06, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the answer to the question, "why would that second deletion be automagic and able to take place without discussion?" would be "consensus can change". Also, it's not that the second deletion took place "without discussion", but rather that the second deletion resulted from the discussion that occurred just before the first deletion. -- Atama頭 17:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to add, we do treat WP:PROD in this way because proposed deletions need to be completely uncontroversial. If an article went through AfD in 2004 and was closed 2-1 in favor of being kept, then in 2011 we still consider deletion to be controversial. I'm not aware that CSD is intended to be treated that way. -- Atama頭 17:40, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that NW makes a good point. The most recent deletion discussion should be controlling. That said, I'd hope that an admin would look carefully at a speedy of any article that was kept in the past at an AfD. Such an article probably has an interesting history attached to it... Hobit (talk) 19:48, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't have any problem with that, NW. I'm a big proponent of SNOW closes at AfDs when consensus is clear, as well it would probably be in that specific hypothetical case. In fact, the vast majority of G4s-after-a-previous-keep-even-if-the-most-recent-was-delete are nowhere near that clear-cut, are they?

G4 is for an AfD/deletion/repost the same content elsewhere or under the same title sequence. The wording also includes trivial modifications, but it is in no way an excuse to prevent editors from working on good-faith updates to deleted content in mainspace, which is how I've seen it applied on several occasions. Jclemens (talk) 00:02, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree with that at all actually. If an article was deleted through AfD, then the community decided that the article doesn't belong in article space. It shouldn't be placed back into mainspace because someone wants to improve it. That circumvents the entire process. We have the article incubator and user subpages for that kind of thing. G4 should be used exactly for that purpose. Does it make sense to totally ignore an AfD because someone wants another chance to work on the article? It doesn't make sense to me. -- Atama頭 00:13, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The circumstance that this recreation is allowed is when new information comes to light on the topic, and the issues in the AFD have been addressed in the recreated article. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:35, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Sure--no one is arguing that the recreated, still-defective article should be kept. It should go directly to AfD, where it would be quickly and painlessly executed by the community rather than an admin acting alone. Jclemens (talk) 04:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

If a situation is codifiable with just a few simple criteria which apply 100% of the time, then what is the point of saying "go to AfD or declare that you are speeding this per IAR". I see no upside to your preferred wording at all. All it seems to be doing is wasting community members' time, which is finite.

Also, can you explain to me how your proposal is consistent with G4's current wording: "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion. This excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version, pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies, and content moved to user space for explicit improvement (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy). This criterion also excludes content undeleted via deletion review, or which was deleted via proposed deletion or speedy deletion (although in that case the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply)." NW (Talk) 03:59, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

NW, I am not making a proposal: I am pointing out how CSD is actually worded. G4 is limited in that since it's a speedy deletion process, it can only apply to speedily deletable material. Nothing kept once at an AfD is speedy deletable unless it's a newly discovered copyvio, and changing the wording of the G4 criterion doesn't affect the overall scope of CSD. Individual criteria can't expand the mandate of CSD, so "fixing" the problem the lead creates in G4 requires a change to the CSD criteria. Which is OK, but not too many people seem to be understanding the location of the issue, and are proposing changes that won't have any net policy effect while the CSD scope remains unchanged. Jclemens (talk) 17:10, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

And I think that everyone else is saying that doesn't make sense at all for G4. I thought policies were supposed to be based on common sense and what's best for Wikipedia, not dogma. -- Atama頭 18:51, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

So are you suggesting that the lead be rewritten to allow what you think should be the common sense application? I don't disagree that that's a reasonable way forward. Jclemens (talk) 19:38, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Most definitely. I'm not sure that the lead unambiguously matches what you're saying (that it clearly demonstrates that any XfD survival invalidates non-copyvio CSDs) but I can definitely see how it can be interpreted that way. So to avoid a situation where the lead conflicts with a change in G4, it should be changed. I'm not sure if it should be changed to say that it's referring only to the most recent XfD result, or that G4 is an exception, as copyvios are also mentioned as an exception. -- Atama頭 16:36, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Depending on the specifics, 2009 to 2011 might be enough time for consensus on the relevant issues to change. WP:Deletion review tends to allow recreation and send to a new AfD if the last AfD is a few years old. To make the hypothetical example clearer, the time between deletion and recreation should be shortened to days. Flatscan (talk) 04:29, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Of course if an article was deleted at a recent AfD and it is reposted with the same content, G4 applies, even if it was kept three years years before at another discussion. And this meets the letter of the criterion, which is not the statement you quote from the lead but "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion." The general notion in the lead is a good one, but it was never intended to conflict with G4; it's just that a few very specific situations where it also would not apply (I can think of two others) are not as obvious as copyvios. It addresses the general idea that when considering a speedy, a one (or, depending on how you look at it, two) person decision, as opposed to a discussion among more people that explores the merits, is trumped in most situations.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:16, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

While it certainly seems like that might be the case, it's not. The lead paragraphs of CSD explain the process, which is exactly as it says: Speedy only applies when there's no controversy, and nothing except a new copyvio allows a previously kept article to be speedily deleted. G4 is just one criterion, and it doesn't trump the overall expectations for CSD usage. I, too, can think of others--but those would be IARs, which is always OK when the circumstances dictate it. In fact, NW's hypothetical example might be a fine example of an IAR speedy... but it's not a G4, because the underlying article had been kept once.

I'd be willing to help craft a rewrite of the lead AND G4 that actually fixes this, but I think the more important aspect of G4 reform is strengthening the "substantially identical" requirement. That is, no good-faith effort to address a prior deletion is G4-able now, even though it happens inappropriately at the moment, and I'd welcome the opportunity to strengthen the language appropriately. Jclemens (talk) 04:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah I see: you think that there's something controversial about an article whose most recent deletion discussion resulted in it being deleted upon the close of that discussion, being summarily re-deleted when it is reposted in contravention of the outcome of the discussion, with the repost containing the same content that the discussion considered. By contrast, I can't imagine a more uncontroversial matter.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:30, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

If it's been kept at AfD once before, indeed, there's nothing controversial about it: it's simply not eligible for G4 unless it's a copyvio, since it was kept at AfD at one point. Of course, special BLP measures apply as well, if needed, but remember: Speedy deletion is for things that no good-faith editor familiar with our policy disagrees with; for things that are an uphill and/or hopeless, yet contested, battle... AfD applies. Jclemens (talk) 05:00, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

It makes no sense to grant the right to perpetual recreation to a subject that once managed to muster enough !votes to prevent a consensus from forming and has since been deleted by one or more subsequent AfDs. G4 should be based upon the most recent AfD as explained above. --Allen3 ^talk 19:22, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

No one has proposed that. I've said that WP:RFPP or changing the overall CSD wording are both effective ways to accomplish that. Jclemens (talk) 19:38, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Seems people just aren't understanding the problem with the logic here--AGFing that I'm not explaining it well, let's try this again:

1) The general CSD rule: "If a page has survived a prior deletion discussion, it should not be speedy deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations."

2) What G4 says: "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion. This excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version, pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies, and content moved to user space for explicit improvement (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy). This criterion also excludes content undeleted via deletion review, or which was deleted via proposed deletion or speedy deletion (although in that case the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply)."

Nowhere does 2) claim to supersede 1). It has a bunch of additional clauses about what is NOT G4-able, but nowhere does it claim to have an exception to the general rule articulated in 1). If there's a desire to have G4 apply to previously-kept XfD's, then 1) needs to change, not 2). Does that make it clearer? Jclemens (talk) 19:49, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Explained that way, 1) need to be changed to specify the most recent deletion discussion instead of using its current ambiguous wording. If an article has been has undergone multiple discussions then "prior" may refer to any past discussion suitable to a wikilawyer's agenda and fails to recognize Wikipedia's policy that Consensus can change. --Allen3 ^talk 20:18, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it should specify the most recent. I've actually always worked on that assumption--it does not really make sense otherwise. ` DGG ( talk ) 01:24, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

It makes sense to me: consensus can change, and consensus can change back, so speedying something that's been decided two different ways on two different occasions is inappropriate. Speedy is not about making things convenient for those who want to see things deleted, it's intentionally narrowly drawn to do things where the outcome is essentially predetermined, were it taken to AfD. Differing XfD outcomes is the poster child for consensus being able to change. Jclemens (talk) 04:39, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Jclemens, you may wish to re-read your statement and decide where you stand. Your statement the "It makes sense to me" indicates support for the two comments directly above (using the most recent discussion). This is followed with "speedying something that's been decided two different ways on two different occasions is inappropriate", indicating you oppose using the most recent discussion as the deciding factor when at least one previous discussion came to a differing conclusion. I suspect your repeated introduction of such non-deterministic language is the reason people are unable to understand your position. --Allen3 ^talk 11:44, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Let's break this down once more.

1) The way the lead of CSD is written, nothing which survived an XfD previously, except newly discovered copyvios, are eligible. I really don't see that as controversial, unclear, or ambiguous.

2) The way that would be applied, that any kept-deleted-recreated article would be automagically booted to AfD forever after, doesn't seem inappropriate to me.

3) At the same time, rewriting the lead so that G4 works the way several people want it to work doesn't seem inappropriate to me either.

So... does that help? Don't confuse my pointing out an inconvenient fact about the current verbiage with me saying that it's the only possible way it could be, and advocating that it remain that way. In this case, I think it's reasonable way to change it, but the discussion reveals a lot of poor assumptions about the purpose and scope of CSD. Jclemens (talk) 01:08, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) It makes no sense at all. Consensus can change is a complete red herring here. The notion is just as applicable to an article that was deleted only once at AfD as one that was kept and then later deleted. Consensus can change has nothing to do with the matter. G4 is a mechanism to enforce the result of deletion discussions that ended in a deletion. It is obvious and tacit that when an AfD is closed as delete it trumps prior discussions as a logical necessity—or we wouldn't delete at all as a result of the very discussion. It is just as obvious and tacit that when an article is kept that was previously deleted, the consensus of keep trumps the prior deletion on a going forward basis. Accordingly, of course an article whose most recent discussion was to keep is not subject to G4, and of course an article whose most recent discussion was to delete is subject to G4. This view of the lead language as inviolate, as to be interpreted like some strict constructionist scholar interpreting the constitution is a problem. Someone added the lead language in (actually here), the exception of a potential conflict with G4 was simply never noted, and we can remedy that now. Meanwhile, the reductio ad absurdum; actually not even, the natural absurd result of your interpretation, is that if an article was ever kept, upon a deletion result at a later AfD, one second after the close anyone can repost the exact same content that was considered at the discussion, and that repst has to go through AfD again.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:31, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

And why is that necessarily a problem that must be dealt with by unilateral administrator deletion? Do you think that the editor who reposted that article will escape unscathed? That sounds like disruptive editing to me, and RFPP would easily take care of that possibility. The much bigger problem with G4 is when administrators take one look at a rewritten article and say "Nope, I think the deletion rationale still applies" and delete the article (again, rewritten in good faith) without a discussion. If you want to pick on a real problem with G4, as opposed to a mostly theoretical interaction, that would be my pick. I'd much rather sculpt its applicability to safeguard good-faith reposts, even if that means we have to deal with disruptive editing without immediately deleting the reporting. Jclemens (talk) 01:15, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Unilateral administrator deletion? What? If you want to characterize it that way, that's every CSD. You think it should be treated differently when there's been a prior survival, whereas I think the prior survival is utterly irrelevant. People will escape unscathed? I have no idea what this has to do with the matter. RFPP? I'm again lost as to what you're talking about. Instead of deleting a repost we would protect it? Why? In what form? So an AfD ends and then the same content that was deleted is reposted. We should now keep that new content but protect it? As for misapplication (as opposed to your misinterpretation) as you're talking about in the latter half of your post, that does happen, but every CSD is sometimes misapplied. The language is already clear that G4 does not apply to sufficiently rewritten material. Maybe we could make it clearer but it's off topic; a complete tangent to the issue you raised in this thread.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:35, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Let me play Devil's Advocate here (not that I'm calling you The Devil, Jclemens!) because while I don't agree with Jclemens I think that I get what his point is. He suggests that speedily deleting an article that has been recreated isn't necessary, and may be bite-y. He's also suggesting that if recreation of an article is such a problem, it makes more sense to salt it rather than to keep deleting it over and over per G4. There's some sense to that, I'll admit.

However, I still disagree. First of all, the concept of "unilateral administrator deletion" is somewhat flawed. G4 is probably the least "unilateral" CSD criterion. You could say that most every other CSD criterion is unilateral, except perhaps for U1 or G7 which require that the user or page author respectively is requesting deletion explicitly. Most any other CSD criteria can be applied if an administrator simply sees a page and thinks the criterion is relevant (generally), as the policy states, "The criteria for speedy deletion specify the only cases in which administrators have broad consensus to bypass deletion discussion, at their discretion, and immediately delete Wikipedia pages or media." Alone among all of the criteria, G4 actually requires that a consensus be reached in a deletion discussion that supports the administrator's deletion. So again, it's the least unilateral form of speedy deletion.

And there is one thing that Jclemens has stated that is simply wrong; I'm not saying it's an opinion I disagree with, I'm saying it's factually incorrect. He has stated that, "Speedy only applies when there's no controversy". That's incorrect, and our policy makes that clear. It lists the differences between speedy and the other three deletion methods (proposed deletions, deletion discussions, and office actions) and defines proposed deletions as "nominating pages for uncontroversial deletion". If speedy deletions needed to be uncontroversial, there would really be nothing to differentiate them from proposed deletions. I can say that in practice, controversial speedy deletions happen all the time. Otherwise we wouldn't have discussions at DRV about how appropriate a deletion was, we would just restore a page if someone objected to it (which is how proposed deletions actually do work). If they had to be uncontroversial, then we'd allow article authors to remove CSD tags. We'd disallow deletion of articles where someone has protested the deletion on the article's talk page. None of that is the case. The only CSD criterion that can't be applied with controversy is G6. So I agree with Fuhghettaboutit when they say that "prior survival is utterly irrelevant". -- Atama頭 16:49, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

A good summary Atama. One quibble. If by "RFPP" what was being referred to was salting, then it still makes no sense. In order to salt, one needs to delete first. So the G4 deletion would still need to be carried out. Whether to salt thereafter is a different question. It think we generally should not. By salting, we foreclose the possibility of a person posting a new version that is not sufficiently similar to the deleted content—one that addresses the deletion bases by, for example, including sufficient sources to meet the GNG that was identified as the problem in the AfD. There may be particular, sui generis situations where (long term) salting is warranted, but I think they are rare.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:29, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it wouldn't, Jclemens is proposing that recreation should lead to a new AfD, and if that AfD concludes as "delete", that it should be salted at that time. And I agree with you, salting seems to bite even more than just deleting by G4, because if we don't salt then we open up the possibility of recreating the page properly (in other words, substantially different and resolving the concerns that led to deletion at the AfD). I personally have kind of a "three strikes and you're out" rule for salting; if a page is recreated 3 times or more and speedily deleted each time (for whatever reason) then I protect it after deleting it one final time. -- Atama頭 23:14, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

The "survived a prior deletion discussion" sentence in the lead

Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases. If a page has survived a prior deletion discussion, it should not be speedy deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations.

Is this sentence general guidance that allows for unstated exceptions or a rule that must be interpreted rigidly? I agree with Fuhghettaboutit's comment (diff) that there are a few exceptions in addition to the explicitly stated copyright violations (G12). For example, an exception involving U1 is easy to describe:

U1 User request: User:Example's user page includes content that another user believes to be a violation of WP:User pages. That user nominates it at MfD, but the page is not found to be an egregious violation and is kept. Example later retires and tags his/her user page with U1.

Is it necessary to expand the list of exceptions to be exhaustive? Flatscan (talk) 04:19, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer we enumerated the list of things to which this doesn't apply, while keeping the general rule and scope of speedy deletion intact. Sure, U1 is a good example of something where the prior deletion discussion probably doesn't make sense. Jclemens (talk) 04:41, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused about the fact that you seem to be supporting this, given the discussion above. Anyway, I didn't think we needed an exhaustive list but given that discussion, I do think we need the change something. I was not thinking of IAR as you suggested, but in addition to G4: U1, G9 and possibly undiscovered and confirmed hoaxes under G3 (i.e., the creator admits). We also have to hope that "page" is not interpreted more broadly, or F1, F5, F8 and C1 would also need to be included in any list.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:56, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

If we're getting into a list longer than about 3 entries then I think that it would be good to link instead to a separate "Exceptions" section where exceptions to the general rule of 'XfD Keep = not speediable' are listed with a brief explanation why (copyvio is obvious, U1 isn't necessarily). Thryduulf (talk) 19:41, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe a footnote?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:00, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Is CSD G4 applicable or inapplicable to a previously kept page whose most recent discussion ended in deletion?

Once a page has previously been kept at an XfD discussion as "keep" or "no consensus", some users believe {{db-repost}} (CSD G4) is never applicable, even if the most recent XfD was closed as "delete". Others hold that the most recent discussion is what invokes the applicability of CSD G4. ~~~~

Notifications

• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines
• Wikipedia:Centralized discussion

Never applicable

Most recent discussion

Discussion (re G4 applicability)

View by User:Example

Up to thirty days grace for G10s

There is some interesting discussion going on at mediawiki New Page Patrol Zoom Interface about possible changes to the Newpage patrol process. I suspect the proposal to shift the emphasis of patrolling from the front of the queue to the back will be of particular interest to viewers of this page. ϢereSpielChequers 21:32, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Hopefully even if they do manage to move NPP to the end of the queue, most Vandalism and Attack pages will still be picked up and promptly dealt with by those patrolling recent changes for vandalism, thought I guess this will cause more to slip through. Monty₈₄₅ 22:03, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps unusually for experienced NPPers, I tend to work the front, partly because there's usually more to do but also to compensate for the children who don't know what the hell they're doing. With that whole exercise, the WMF people are demonstrating their inability to recognize where they're in over their heads and other people know what they're doing better than them. I've rather clearly expressed why that is in a couple locations, but they don't seem to want to listen. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:16, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Judging by my experience as an NP patroller, I can say that the vast majority of speedable articles are found at the front end of the queue, and even going only two hours back I usually find that at least 90% of speedable articles have already been dealt with before I saw them. When I work the back of the log, my prod-to-speedy ratio increases tenfold. In fact, sometimes I can do a whole page of backlog patrol without tagging a single article, whereas in front-end patrol that only happens when Dr. Blofeld (talk · contribs) is mass-producing his geo stubs. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 02:10, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I completely concur with Blade. I've just done what has become for me a rare stint at NPP from the front o the queue. Of about 20 articles checked, I probably summarily deleted 5 without further ado, tagged another 5 or so for other admins to delete, warned about 5 NPPers (that's 25% of my patrolled pages by the way) about using the wrong criteria, PRODed another 5 or so, sent a couple of declined PRODs to AfD, and could not pass one single new page as fit for use. Steve Walling (WMF) has suggested we do a video record of our patrolling - is that because they don't trust the stats we've been providing them with for a year? Or is it because they want to take the credit for coming up with an alternative solution to what was proposed at WP:ACTRIAL ? The proposed mediawiki New Page Patrol Zoom Interface won't necessarily bring about any changes to the Newpage patrol process, because such a tool can only be as good as the workers who use it, and the prospect of allowing G10 to slumber for 30 days waiting for attention sounds not only ludicrous, but positively dangerous. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:49, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

You can direct Steve Walling to User:Blanchardb/CSD statistics. It's been a while since I stopped compiling such data, but not much has changed since then. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 03:58, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Nice table Blanch. Must have taken ages to complete it manually. I've often thought of doing something similar, but I cannot figure out what Twinkle does to our patrol logs these days - if it's even working properly at all. I certainly don't have the time, inclination, or energy to provide a screencast for people as rude, dismissive, and patronising as the the current WMF team working on this Zoom project. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:23, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The usual reason for working at the back end, is to deal with the difficult ones. Not that they usually need speedy, but they need the judgment of someone experienced to figure out what to do with them. (I've just checked 10, and though only a few need deletion, most need something.) But there's reasons for patrolling from the front also: one has been given: you get more action. But another is that at least half of the otherwise routine speedies deserve the attention and assistance on the user talk page that an experienced editor is better able to give, not the use of the standard templates, which is generally all that beginners are abler to manage. I'm aware this could be an argument for the most experienced users doing everything--in which case nobody new could get practice and develop their skills, and it's necessary for people to develop skill in this to become admins & other experienced people, just the same as the need developing the skills of new editors. In practice, what I think we with some experience need to do is to take a hand at various portions occasionally, to keep in touch with the raw input, just as all experienced people also need to write the occasional article DGG ( talk ) 01:15, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

"...Click here to contest this speedy deletion which appears inside of the speedy deletion tag..."

This page says:

"A creator who disagrees with the speedy deletion should instead click on the button that looks like this: Click here to contest this speedy deletion which appears inside of the speedy deletion tag."

I cannot find that button anywhere on 3D printing, Talk:3D printing, or File:MakerBot ThingOMatic Bre Pettis.jpg. Am I missing something or is the documentation out of date?

(I want to contest the speedy deletion; everything MakerBot does is open source - GPL or CC. I am confident that I will be able to obtain explicit permission, but I may need more time.) --Guy Macon (talk) 15:14, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

That's because the page hasn't been proposed for speedy deletion (not yet, anyway, it will be on 2 October 2011). That button is just a more user-friendly way of posting on the talk page, which I see you've already done. Hut 8.5 15:23, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah. In that case, the bot that posted to Talk:3D printing probably should not say "An image used in this article ... has been nominated for speedy deletion." --Guy Macon (talk) 16:04, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

A7--proposed clarification.

I'd like to change A7 to make it so that if a topic has a source that reasonably could be considered to meet WP:N it isn't an A7 candidate. I think I've proposed this before, but my sense is that A7 isn't supposed to be used as a way around WP:N. That is, if an article has sourcing that likely qualifies under WP:N it really shouldn't be deleted as an A7. There seems to be some debate about this at a few recent DRVs. Proposed language is in bold:

...even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines, though a source that does qualify under that guideline is an assertion of importance.

Though I'm open to better/other language. Thoughts? Hobit (talk) 15:36, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

We already try to make that clear by saying that A7 "is a lower standard than notability", but apparently that text ought to be made more prominent. I'm not fond of your proposed wording, as it's a bit clunky and slightly confusing. I'd rather we add another sentence after that one, reading something like:

This criterion does not apply to any article which provides a reliable source written primarily about its subject.

Perhaps with a note attached explaining why. In addition, we might want to bold some part of A7 being a lower standard than notability. Cheers. lifebaka++ 18:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I like Lifebaka's proposal, and maybe the attached note can be a footnote. I don't like saying that including the source is itself an "assertion of importance", that "assertion clause" is already confusing enough to most people without muddying it up any further. -- Atama頭 18:52, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I support the principle and Lifebaka's wording is better than Hobit's, but I'm not certain about requiring the source to be "primarily about" it's subject. For example if the subject is an artist and the source is a book that devotes a chapter to the artist then that's almost always going to be enough to pass the A7 hurdle; however if the book has chapters on a dozen other artists too then it's not "primarily about" the article subject. So I think a better phrasing would be:

This criterion does not apply to any article which provides a reliable source containing significant coverage about its subject.

Although I don't think that is perfect yet. Thryduulf (talk) 19:31, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

For the record, I agree both proposed phrasings are better than mine and prefer Thryduulf's. Also, I think A7 is getting long enough breaking this (and maybe some other stuff) into a footnote would be wise. I found parsing A7 to be hard as written and a footnote is a good solution IMO. Hobit (talk) 19:35, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I have supported this in the past, and for reasons unknown, there has been substantial opposition. Anyway, support again.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I would just say, "If there is any way that the article could be construed as notable, by anyone, anywhere, ever, then it is also not eligible for A7", but the above proposals are also acceptable. Monty₈₄₅ 23:26, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't want to make suggestion that make the addition unwieldy in length, but don't we need to indicate that were talking about independent, third-party sources? (this could be added as a footnote right after the word source).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:59, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we need a standard, one-word description of such sources ("suitable"?, "qualifying"?) that is linked to a footnote that explains that by this we mean reliable, independent, third party sources with the usual definitions. My concern, including with the wording I suggested yesterday, is that CSD patrollers shouldn't be determining the reliability or independence of sources as such is not always straightforward (cf WP:RSN). Thryduulf (talk) 09:06, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

A3 questions

Currently A3 includes deletion of "a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks". If a newbie is asking a question in the wrong place, surely we should be moving their question to the right place and explaining to them what we've done, rather than summarily delete it? Am I missing something here or can we agree to change this? ϢereSpielChequers 19:24, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree with you, however we still should be deleting the page itself even in those cases. It's probably a good idea to add a footnote with that suggestion as long as nobody else objects. It strikes me as biting to simply delete a good-faith question from someone trying to get help, only because they asked in the wrong place. I'd say copy their question to the appropriate place and leave a message on their user talk page that you've done so, or if the question is something you can answer or otherwise assist with yourself, engage the editor directly to provide them assistance. After giving that help, then delete the page. -- Atama頭 19:33, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) An admin can, and in most cases should, still copy+paste the question to the right place and inform the new editor of their mistake. But A3 allows them to delete the page they created for it afterwards, since it doesn't serve any purpose anymore (since HD/RD work in sections, not pages, actually moving such a page there won't work). Regards SoWhy 19:34, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

A good point. I would suggest this as a footnote (far to long for in-text): Those nominating under this criterion on the basis of a misplaced question are encouraged to repost the material to an appropriate forum, e.g., the [[WP:HD|help desk]] or a section of the [[WP:RD|reference desk]], and to inform the user on their talk page as to the place of relocation. If not done by the nominator, administrators are expected to do so before carrying out the deletion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:02, 29 September 2011 (UTC)