Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Peridon (talk | contribs) at 10:26, 26 April 2013 (→‎A7 wording). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Proposed new criterion: abandoned article drafts

I would like to propose a new criterion: article drafts abandoned for over a year. Article drafts, such as declined WP:AFC submissions, potentially contain unsourced statements and are completely unmonitored. The archives have hoards of them. Virtually all of them would be quickly speedied or prodded if they were in article space, but they sit peacefully undisturbed forever in the archives. --B (talk) 18:05, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • A related discussion has already taken place at Wikipedia talk:Articles for Creation#Procedure_for_abandoned_failed_submissions. I proposed a new CSD criteria "G13 : Abandoned drafts A page not in article space that is clearly a draft, but violates any article related speedy deletion criteria, and does not appear to be actively worked on". Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 18:21, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Better idea - when introducing article criteria, we say "the following criteria apply to any article, or any draft that has not been edited in over a year" No reason to create a new deletion criteria. Ego White Tray (talk) 18:51, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not really keen on having quantifiable time periods, like a year, six months, three and a half weeks etc, and would prefer to leave it to general discretion and common sense about when to apply a certain criteria. Also, a proposed G13 would deal with userspace sandbox articles for people who have left Wikipedia and forgotten about them. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 18:56, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
These are two different problems. Yes, something speedyable as an article should be speedyable as an AFC submission. I don't think it needs a separate number, but just a statement at the top of the articles section that article standards apply to articles in whatever namespace they reside, with the understanding that accommodations are made for in-use article drafts. No time limit for those is needed - and if you're just making an AFC submission about your kid who placed first in the spelling bee, there's no reason to wait any time at all. But while that's a very useful thing, that's not what my proposal is about - my proposal is is for things that ARE NOT OTHERWISE SPEEDYABLE. Meaning, it's a bio piece where an assertion of significance sufficient to not qualify for A7 has been made. But just because it's not speedyable doesn't mean it needs to exist. All or substantially all abandoned submissions, if they were in article space, would be quickly disposed of with either {{prod}} or {{blp-prod}} tags. The fact that they are sitting in AFC space keeps them from being prodded. That is the problem I am trying to solve. --B (talk) 19:39, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To explain what I'm talking about, I picked a few arbitrary samples from the archives:
Now, I did find a gracious plenty more articles that are speedyable, including one attack page that I just took care of. But the existence of speedyable articles shouldn't stop us from also coming up with a rule for other abandoned articles. --B (talk) 20:01, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I lean towards agreeing. I think this was last discussed as Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_46#Can_an_Article_for_creation_submission_be_speedied_under_an_A_criteria.3F (September 2012). I commented there in favour, subject to strict time factors.

    I think an AfC submission could be speediable if (1) It was reviewed and unambiguously failed; and (2) it is old, old both since creation date and since last meaningful edit; and (3) the author has been offered the option to userfy and is informed of the option of requesting their deleted content emailed (this calls for a templated message).

    As some people sometimes forget, it should be reminded that just because something *can* be speedy deleted, it doesn't mean that it *must* be deleted. Speedy deletion authorises an admin to make a unilateral decision on their own judgement and act on it.

    On the other hand, nearly everything useless could just be blanked. Put it behind a template explaining that this is old content, submitted and rejected, unlikely to be of any use to the project. Leaving this cleanup to blanking means that any editor can do it, any other editor can review it, and undo it, and the process doesn't need CSD policy-level rules. Disputes (very rare in practice) can be resolved at MfD. Actually offensive material is covered by the G criteria. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:25, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't object to this proposal if it were restricted to AFC submissions. I can see problems if it applies to userspace drafts, though. Some userspace drafts serve as convenient references for someone (I have one of these myself that I haven't edited in over a year) and while they would not survive main article space, should probably be kept in their respective user spaces. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:31, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I also disagree to this applying to userspace. I more so disagree with it applying to an once productive editor, and extremely so for an active editor. Maybe ambiguous about users that were briefly active long ago and never made a lasting productive edit. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:03, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For user-space drafts, if the editor is even semi-active, the logical and polite action is to send a note to the editor saying something like: "I that User:Example/PageName in your user space hasn't been edited since May 2009. Are you still working on it, or is it time to delete it?" Summarily tagging other people's user pages for speedy deletion is not polite -- and, therefore, not a real smart idea. --Orlady (talk) 01:51, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How about only allowing user-space drafts to be speedied only if the user has not edited in over a year, the page is unambiguously intended as a draft article (in other words, we're not using this as an excuse to clean out userspaces), and the page would be subject to speedy deletion if it were in article space? So I'm proposing these two rules, which I think meet both needs:

U4. Userspace drafts of inappropriate articles.

Pages in userspace that are unambiguously intended as article drafts, where the user has not edited in over a year, and where the page would be subject to speedy deletion if it were in article space.

G13. Abandoned Articles for creation submissions.

Rejected Articles for creation submissions that have not been edited in over a year, provided that if the user is still active, they have been notified at least one week prior to deletion. Note that failed submissions that meet a general criterion for speedy deletion, such as spam or violations of the biographies of living persons policy should be deleted immediately without waiting one year. If an article submission is written on an otherwise appropriate topic, but was rejected for lack of sources or a similar concern, consider improving it rather than deleting it.

Comments? Yeas and Nays? Changes? --B (talk) 04:40, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not sure how a G13 would be a speedy if you have to give a week's notice - isn't that a form of prod? Otherwise, U4 and G13 look good. If someone hasn't edited for a year, they're not likely to suddenly take things up and turn the 'abandoned' draft into an FA. If the thing IS showing a good potential, it should be rescued if possible. There should be some way of notifying willing rescuers of the existence of candidates for completion. Peridon (talk) 16:08, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A delayed-action speedy isn't unprecedented; see WP:CSD#C1, WP:CSD#T3 and most of the F criteria. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:36, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just for clarification, my suggested notification on G13 was only if the user is active. If the user hasn't edited recently, I completely agree - no need for the bureaucratic step - just delete it. I'd be perfectly okay with phrasing it as a courtesy rather than a requirement. --B (talk) 19:24, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm concerned about this. I don't think abandoned draft should be covered by speedy deletion in most cases. It's not uncommon for an abandoned draft brought to miscellany for deletion to end with a "move to article space" - some of these drafts are good enough to be presented as articles, and I don't want to see any speedy deleted. So, U4 should not include A7 " no significance" and A9 "bands". G13 has massive concerns for me, but since it's more of a wikispace than a user space, I would be a little more amenable to speedy deletions there. Ego White Tray (talk) 01:48, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A9 isn't 'bands'. A9 is non-notable recordings by non-articled artistes. Non-notable musicians are in A7. What I see this proposal's intention as is to eliminate the crap and actually get the good drafts finished. I could see active editors agreeing to deletion if they really aren't going to finish a draft, or to agree to someone else finishing it (as with an user space draft article Bragod that I started and Nikthestunned found a year later and dug up the references for). (I've no objections to anyone adding to my Ailish Tynan start-up too...) Where there's stuff that's by editors that were SPAs, or who have now jumped ship, leaving unfinished material, it needs triage. Admins that work in CSD are mostly quite good at deciding if something is unredeemable crap or has potential. There are editors who enjoy rescuing things - I pass stuff over to two or three now. One even turned a piece that appeared to be pure spam into a sound article following a very polite request for help from a desperate beginner. (Unusual, that - would-be advertisers mostly try to tell us the rules and how they don't apply...) I'd like to see the good stuff rescued - and the crap dumped. It could be possible to get a Rescue Project (or just a Category) going where things could be listed for the rescuers to get going on. Sort of the opposite of Speedy Deletion - Speedy Rescue. Think about it. Peridon (talk) 11:08, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll get working on that category. Cobalion. Setting Justice everywhere.active 11:37, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is the Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron and its Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Rescue list (it formerly had a template that I believe placed articles in a category, but due to canvassing concerns, it was replaced by the list). isaacl (talk) 14:05, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh. I already started a village pump thread. Cobalion. Setting Justice everywhere.active 17:33, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Or you could have a standalone PROD template for badly written abandoned drafts (like {{BLP prod}}) Cobalion. Setting Justice everywhere.active 11:26, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose U4. I don't think that enough old userspace drafts are uncontestable and frequent enough to justify a CSD criterion. To my memory, of the number of userpages nominated at MfD, a large proportion is contested, and never has the number been so terribly great. I excluding some cases of mass nominations from the userspace of particular users, but I note that this U4 criteria could easily be misused to attempt to avoid difficult discussions. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:49, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • weak support G13. On G13, there are indeed a great many old and failed AfC submissions, so many that they would overwhelm MfD, and when cases have been nominated, the failed content has been typically unimpressive. Not always completely worthless though, and so anyone applying G13 would have to practice some discernment. Ideally, I think, an admin preparing a mass exercise of G13 should send some test cases though MfD just to be sure. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:49, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Require mandatory notification of the deletion on the talk page of the AfC author, to ensure a minimum record of AfC submissions by the user (for non admins to find). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:47, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Alternate idea I think deleting obviously abandonded AFC submissions that haven't been touched in a year could easily be incorporated under the umbrella of "housekeeping". That is exactly what it is, after all, just taking out the trash. Or, a bot could simply run a script that detects all declined AFC sub,missions that have not been editied in six months and it could PROD them. If the creator is still around and still cares they can remove the PROD. In the much more likely event that they are not around and do not care it will be deleted a week later with a minimum of fuss, so essentially the same thing could be accomplished withput adding a new criterion here. Don't get me wrong, this is a real issue, I just think there may be existing processes that can dal with it with just some minor tweaks. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:34, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose encouraging such a broadening of G6. Using G6 would make it so much harder to track such deletions, we may as well do away with logs. If there is no consensus for this G13, then to bypass this consensus-finding discussion is wrong. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:59, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That would cut out any chance of rescue unless you've got a very discriminating bot. I'm quite happy with prod, because there is a lot of utter rubbish there despite what the retentionists think. And there's probably still some attack stuff, BLP violation and other such in there too - although a couple of editors have been winnowing out quite a bit of chaff that was unredeemable and should have been tagged when it was first seen. I'm not so sure about using G6 unless it has been established as a matter of policy that abandoned for over one year AfC stuff is sweepable up as housekeeping and deleting it is not vandalism. There are a number of editors who seem to regard AfC contributions as sacrosanct and to be preserved for all time against the return of the author. One year is to me a sign that they're not coming back. They might have been in hospital or jail - OK, someone can undelete if that's the case. They're more likely to be worrying about other things... Peridon (talk) 19:44, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is not housekeeping, period. Housekeeping is about cleaning up problems, and never about deleting content (unless you forgot after a deletion discussion) Ego White Tray (talk) 12:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose U4. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thine Antique Pen (talk • contribs) 18:44, 10 March 2013
  • Support G13 without the notification of the editor(s). No objection against people voluntarily giving such notification, but to make this a requirement makes the process too cumbersome and slow. We are dealing with articles that have been proposed, have been rejected, and haven't been touched for a year or longer. No reason to let these linger around any longer (we have thousands of these, older day by day cats list on average about 40 to 45 articles). Fram (talk) 13:41, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support G13 - I think a year is a long time in AFC. I'd say after 6 months we should approach the submitter, and either userfy the draft or delete it. On the other hand, I would oppose U4. A year isn't that long for an established editor - some people take extended Wikibreaks and still return. And things can languish as drafts for a long time and still be turned into articles - I just took adraft I hadn't touched in two years and turned it into an article. MFD is always an option for userspace drafts. I'd be hesitant to allow speedy deletion of something that's otherwise acceptable after just one year of inactivity. Guettarda (talk) 16:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose both No, a speedy criterion is not the right way to handle either problem. While it may offend some people that drafts are hither and yon, it's not actually a problem. Jclemens (talk) 06:07, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • If this is not the right way, then what is? Many of the 20,000 or so really old AfC drafts are spam, a significant portion are copyright violations; we can spend a lot of time checking them one by one, or we can make it easier and simply delete the older ones. What is the problem with doing this? What valuable contributions are being lost by these deletions, and do they outweigh the benefit of getting rid of lots of problematic content? Fram (talk) 14:59, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Any unmonitored space is somewhere that libel or other controversial content could be hiding. Yes, something with libel can already be deleted right now today, but if whoever reviews the submission misses it, then it stays there forever. We have a vested interest in keeping unmonitored spaces as few as possible and there's no upside to keeping clearly inappropriate article drafts around. --B (talk) 13:31, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment With reference to the remark about 'established' editors - how many established editors use AfC? I would think the vast majority of the users there are new accounts (and probably SPAs) or IPs. I concede that established editors may have stuff in their cupboards for a long time and just a polite message might revive their interest in something - or result in a U1... Peridon (talk) 10:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I would venture to say that zero established editors use AFC. Maybe one or two created their first article that way, but that's the rarest of rare exceptions. I picked out ten random articles from Category:Declined AfC submissions. One was created by a named SPA. The other nine were created by IP users. --B (talk) 13:34, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • That was (sort of) the point of my comment: if, after six months, we can track down someone who made an AFC submission, then it's worth seeing if they're interested in doing anything with the draft. If we can't, and no one else has shown interest, then we shouldn't feel badly about deleting the draft (IOW, it should be speedy-able). I suppose tagging them, and putting them in a prod-like category, might also be a useful idea...that way, people who were interested could monitor the category and turn them into articles, if they saw something that really interested them. Guettarda (talk) 18:29, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • I can't imagine for the life of me why anyone thinks we need to keep the 381 pages in Category:AfC submissions declined as BLP violations‎. That's insane. Ditto for the 985 pages in Category:AfC submissions declined as jokes‎. We can talk about having some kind of reasonable review process for articles that are conceivably on an appropriate topic but only lacking in sources ... but there's 87,956 declined AFC submissions and the overwhelming majority of them are utter junk. It's unmaintained and unmaintainable. --B (talk) 20:31, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support G13 there are an awful lot of declined AfC submissions, they have very little value (it certainly isn't worth sorting through them one by one), they could contain problematic content, and nobody is maintaining them. Hut 8.5 20:42, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • As an added note here, if it would allay the concerns of those who don't want some sort of mass deletion, we could have an orderly process where we slowly creep up the deletion date. So the ultimate target is to delete year-old AFCs, but we start out deleting ones from 3 years ago, then 2 years 11 months, 2 years 10 months, etc, so that there is opportunity for those who wish to to review them. We could also hit the obvious ones first that should have been speedied to begin with (like the jokes and obvious BLP violations, which are speediable now anyway) and use a PROD-like process for anything that is a less obvious case. --B (talk) 20:47, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see three problems with ancient AfC submissions:
  1. Lots of AfC submissions are copyright violations, but these are hard to spot after a long time has passed and people have started copying the page from Wikipedia.
  2. WP:N: You can get an article about anything, but the non-notable ones end up in the Wikipedia talk namespace.
  3. WP:NOTHOST: Since no one is deleting these pages, you can store basically any contents in the Wikipedia talk namespace.
For these reasons, I think that we need to delete old pages somehow. A delayed G13 speedy for pages not edited for a year sounds like a good idea. Also, in case someone wants to pick up the page again, we could permit undeletion at WP:REFUND and removal of the deletion template, thereby allowing the page to be around for another year. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:32, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose U4. Some user pages that look like drafts may actually be kept around as examples of various editing techniques, such as markup for special symbols, citation markup, and the like. The user may be referring to these examples, without changing them, when editing articles. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:34, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose The existence of lots of drafts is a natural consequence of the scale of Wikipedia. We do not have a deadline because this is a volunteer effort and arbitrary time limits should not be imposed, per WP:CREEP. Deletion doesn't actually delete the material; it just restricts visibility to admins. There doesn't seem to be a good reason why only admins should be allowed to view such drafts. Warden (talk) 09:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative Proposal #1: Apply PROD to all drafts

Some people above have touched on this idea, but I think the real solution here is to apply PROD to article drafts. As many people above have notices, speedy deletions generally shouldn't apply to article drafts, since they're not done it. Obviously there are exceptions, such as copyright violations and attack pages. There is no harm in PRODing it for seven days to see if anyone objects. It also would automatically give a place for the rescue squad to look for drafts with potential. Ego White Tray (talk) 12:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not sure PROD scales up to tagging tens of thousands of drafts, which (iirc) is what the actual figure of abandoned ones is. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:56, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • PROD on unwatched pages is just a CSD under another name. The word "Proposed" implies that someone will read/review it. As no one would review thousands of unwatched AfC failures, the word "proposed" is inappropriate. PROD is inappropriate. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:19, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, one word of caution here ... don't let "perfect" be the enemy of "good enough". Yes, right now, there's a backlog, but once that backlog is worked though, PROD would easily handle it going forward. And while yes, SmokeyJoe, you're right that nobody is going to have these articles watchlisted, is that really any different than most articles getting PRODded now? Besides, a PROD guarantees that at least two people review it (the nominator plus the admin) and that creates an opportunity for one of them to decide that the article is worth moving into article space. Under the current system, nobody EVER is going to review the articles and they will sit there completely unmonitored, potentially containing libel or unsourced claims, until the end of time. I think allowing them to be prodded is the perfect compromise solution. I would propose, though, that we still maintain the time requirement - that it only be allowed for article drafts abandoned for some time - for the sake of not biting new contributors (ie, you make an article draft and five minutes later someone slaps a tag on it). --B (talk) 13:28, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There's a false pretense about PROD in this case that I find wrong. No one will review them, and/or prodding will damage the existing article PROD system. Pretending that there will be a PROD review means that prodders may not feel they need to act with full responsibility. The CSD G13 path is more honest. With CSD criteria, we can demand that the admin is sure the requirements are met, requirements that I think should be: the draft is long untouched; the original author is long inactive, a note is made on the original authors usertalkpage (if registered). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:20, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you can prod a mainspace article then it seems reasonable to be able to prod a draft too. This is a better way to dealing with stuff that nobody cares about and if they turn up later, it should be easy to get a refund. Warden (talk) 09:32, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative Proposal #2: An orderly process

I'd like to propose alternative proposal #2: an orderly process. This should allay the concerns of those who don't want to risk useful content being lost in a mass effort.

  1. Remind reviewers that general criteria apply to AFC submissions and that unsourced BLPs with a negative tone, jokes, and similar wholly inappropriate content should be deleted on the spot, not blanked and left in place for years.
  2. Gradually start G13 out at 3 years, then slowly tick it up to 1 year. This keeps CSD from being overwhelmed and allows for articles to be reviewed before deletion.
  3. Allow only "clearly and indisputably unencyclopedic topics" to be speedied under G13 - everything else has to be PRODed. This will allow for things that might be usable to be reviewed prior to deletion.

Submitted, --B (talk) 20:57, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I recommend a mass MfD nomination of a narrow time range of very old declined AfC submissions, or even from a worse subcategory, to demonstrate (test) an overwhelming consensus that on a case by case basis the community approves their deletion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:26, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • 87,956? Ye gods! That's way worse than I thought It would be. OK, I'll go with AP2 G13 and prod. I presume there'll be some provision for anything that's potentially usable after a bit of work? A sort of open access incubator for fostering rescuers. While we're at it - how about unreviewed submissions? The stuff people started while bored and forgot about after something more entertaining came along? Are there many of them that are obviously dead ducks? Peridon (talk) 23:19, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think if we use the dated categories, those would catch both the unreviewed submissions and the failed ones. If there are any unreviewed submissions (and I think they would be few and far between), they could be handled more carefully and promoted to articles if of sufficient quality. --B (talk) 23:59, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, anything that IS a free standing article now would not be liable to G13 (although it might be liable to something else...). It's the non-accepted and unreviewed stuff we're after. The stuff that's currently going nowhere, and hasn't been going anywhere for quite some time. The stuff that needs to either be put where rescuers know about it, or binned. Peridon (talk) 13:55, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So, then, I should remove those two article talk pages (and any else I find) from the category? Ego White Tray (talk) 12:44, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If we decided that we wanted to use the dated categories for this, a bot could easily be called upon to split the rejected submissions out from the accepted ones or the pre-2009 pages where we didn't have a separate page for each article. (September 2008 is the first month where each submission gets its own page.) That part of it isn't a problem. --B (talk) 15:53, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Question: Does the 87,956 number include the Talk pages that are in the Category:AfC submissions by date? Am I correct in believing that the Talk pages are being retained in the category as a record of AfC activity? If so, should this be changed to a hidden category?
SBaker43 (talk) 14:56, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The 87K is only the ones that are in the declined AFC submissions category. There is a separate undated category for all declined submissions. The dated categories are for all submissions (declined, approved, or otherwise). If we were to approve G13, we could easily have a bot create dated categories for declined submissions just like we have for prods, orphaned images, etc. --B (talk) 15:12, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note that we don't have to policy-in point 2: the process by which we do something is bound to policy, but doesn't have to do so immediately. If we have a criterion on which we may delete them, it doesn't mean we have to tag and delete them all right away. I could see the case of the tagging being done by bot, which checks if the CSD cat isn't overflowing (for example, only tag if there are less than 30 pages in the cat, starting with the oldest untouched). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:46, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

G13

Just a procedural point, do we have consensus to add G13 to WP:CSD, or does it need to go to an RfC first? We certainly need to check the precise wording of such as a criteria very carefully. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:16, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would think the greater community would require an RfC for something like this. Many people in the community are not aware this discussion is taking place. 64.40.54.205 (talk) 11:00, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Have you been paying any attention? Clearly there is a lot of opposition to the idea. Ego White Tray (talk) 12:35, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I said "do we have consensus to add G13?" Clearly your answer is "No" in this instance. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:47, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we would have consensus if we modified the G13 proposal to the wording of U4, that the article would be subject to speedy deletion under the other A criteria if in article space. Presumably, the usual one would be A7. DGG ( talk ) 06:51, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with that is that it doesn't actually solve any problem. The problem is that right now, we have an unmaintainable space where libel and copyright violations reign free. Nobody is going to randomly patrol AFC submissions, so if the problem wasn't caught immediately upon submission, it will sit there forever. If we are empowered to delete ALL old submissions, then those will be processed in dated categories just like orphaned fair use images, PRODs, etc. But if we aren't deleting all of them, then nobody will have any way of knowing what articles have or have not been reviewed for deletability and so none of them will get reviewed. The libel and copyright violations that we desire to find will sit there forever. --B (talk) 12:08, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than saying G13 pages can be deleted if subject to deletion as an article, why not just expand the "A" criteria to cover drafts? I'm just thinking of the deletion logs here - seeing "no significance" is much more informative than "draft subject to speedy delete", which tells you squat. Ego White Tray (talk) 12:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, we don't want to do that - someone might start on an article draft without having enough information to prove the person's importance. We don't need to get all bitey by deleting their article while they're in the middle of working on it. --B (talk) 14:14, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
At present, the AfC people are tagging quite a lot of junk as it appears. How much is getting by still, I don't know, but in the earlier days it would seem that a lot was missed or was even preserved. Peridon (talk) 15:36, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Complete oppose

This is the exact reason that I created Wikiproject Abandoned Drafts. Now, if we're talking about drafts on non-notable subjects or drafts that are attack pages, then fine. But everything else should not be deleted just because it's "old". Move it to the Wikiproject. SilverserenC 20:59, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

From my experience, the vast majority of abandoned drafts are self promoted vanispamcrufvertisments, just not sufficiently blatant to fall foul of G11. If they somehow got moved to mainspace tomorrow, I suspect we'd see a couple of thousand CSD A7s appear very quickly. Seriously, spend some time on the AFC Help desk and see how many times you have to explain WP:V, WP:N and WP:RS to people - if you don't get a sense of satisfaction from improving someone's clue, you'll go mad. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 23:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Then it's fine to delete those, but just making a blanket "delete all drafts older than a year" isn't helping anything. I've found plenty of abandoned article drafts on notable topics that were practically completed already with only a few formatting changes needed before moving it into mainspace. SilverserenC 00:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A separation of declined AfC submissions into material with possible potential and material of no possible potential (to be deleted) would be desirable, I think. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:10, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, please. SilverserenC 00:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it certainly would. There are so many possibilities that I can think of no way of doing it except by MfD. Perhaps rather than discuss how to find an algorithm for how to do it by speedy, we should simply get started. MfD can be just as simple as Prod. The only question is, how are we to identify these items? I see no convenient category or list of rejected or unsubmitted items, but perhaps I have missed it in the confusion of the AfC project's pages and procedures. DGG ( talk ) 00:52, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

SilverSeren, at first glance I see 6 articles that your wikiproject has so far gotten into the mainspace, in over a year time. Perhaps there is a much longer list somewhere, but I don't see it. How do you propose to deal with the 80,000 old AfC submissions? Feel free to move any you really feel are salvageable to your project, but why keep all the others around indefinitely? Why keep thousands of copyright violations and the like around for the few potential gems between them? Fram (talk) 10:00, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a problem with deleting the copyright violations or the attack pages, I just oppose outright deletion of all the articles without looking at them at all. I don't agree with bulk deletions. We've already had enough stuff lost in the past because of bulk deletions. SilverserenC 02:57, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Outright copyright violations and attack pages can already be speedy deleted right now today. The problem is that nobody is ever going to patrol for them because it would be purely a random process. You have no way of knowing if someone else has already reviewed a particular AFC submission so any effort at weeding them out would be duplicative at best. And if we're going to have some kind of orderly process to find copyright violations and attack pages, we might as well use that same orderly process to delete anything that has no hope of ever becoming an article. --B (talk) 17:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
With all due respect to the good folks at WikiProject Abandonned Drafts - where the hell have you people been?!?! Why is this the first time folks who deal with hundreds of drafts every day at AFC are even hearing about the existence of the project? If the Project doesn't have the capacity to deal with around fifty drafts per day, then there's really not much point in the project even existing. Using a teaspoon to empty a pond while it's being filled from a fire hose is pointless. Your energy would be better spent doing AfC reviews. Roger (talk) 07:30, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Update

Just thought I should post an update that MadmanBot (talk · contribs) is now checking AfC submissions for copyright violations. Also, several people are working on bots for checking AfC space for copyvios (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Reviewers: Please check for copyright violations!). Anybody that wants to check individual articles can use the Copyvio Detector at tools:~earwig/copyvios and G12 the problem articles. I'll also note that attack pages, BLP vios, etc. can/already are being G10'ed and don't need a new criteria in case people weren't sure. So many of the issues raised above are actively being worked on by the community at this time. Just figured people might like an update on the situation. Cheers. 64.40.54.32 (talk) 11:49, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but it will take much more time and effort to check all these old failed article submissions for these problems than the proposed G13 crterion, and all that extra effort will have very little benefit (in the form of articles). It is a serious improvement that all new entries will be checked for copyvio obviously, so that in the future they don't remain for a year or more, but I don't think they are a viable alternative for the speedy deletion of all old entries. I have spent some time individually checking and deleting old spam (G11) articles, and it takes way too much time. Fram (talk) 09:48, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I probably ought to point out that all our text copyright processes are seriously undermanned and frequently get backlogged. Increasing the workload isn't going to do any good. Hut 8.5 12:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Archive Request

At Wikipedia_talk:Database_download#dump_of_Articles_for_Creation_requested I've asked for an archive of the contents of Articles for Creation before it gets nuked. —rybec 04:13, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

G13: Abandoned Articles for creation submissions

– There is unanimous support for implementing this change, but no consensus for changing it to 3 or 6 months, or an expansion into userspace drafts, so the original proposal shall stand. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:55, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
– I've unclosed this. I whole-heartedly agree with the shenanigans discussion below. If we are going to authorize admins to delete pages with minimal review (which is what speedy deletion is), then we need to do this right. Ego White Tray (talk) 22:14, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
– Restoring close. It has become evident after further discussion that a similar proposal on WP:VPR has a few major differences which would make it far more overreaching, and the reason for all the opposition on a similar proposal on WP:VPR is that it proposed to delete all old AfC submissions (not just declined ones), and the indiscriminate nature of mass deletion. As the current proposal has not gained significant opposition in the meantime, we can close it now. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:02, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
– Discussion boldly reopened by Colonel Warden at 09:39, 12 April 2013 (UTC). Steel1943 (talk) 02:20, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
– Reclosing this discussion. The original proposal to add this criterion seems to have been approved by consensus per WP:SNOW; however, the exact details in the wording and the time frame stated in the criterion are currently being discussed in sections below. Please feel free to add on to those discussions prior to their closure. Steel1943 (talk) 02:07, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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.

In the above discussion, Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Proposed new criterion: abandoned article drafts, a suggestion for a new speedy criterion G13 was made. This had some support, but the (correct) remark that a simple talk page discussion can't decide was made. So I propose the following for this RfC:

G13: Rejected Articles for creation submissions that have not been edited in over a year Fram (talk) 13:31, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support as proposer. I wouldn't mind doing this after 3 or 6 months instead of a year, but I can live with a year. There are currently more than 90,000 declined AfC submissions in Category:Declined AfC submissions, including thousands of advertisements, hundreds of BLP and detected copyright violations, and many thousands of articles that don't fit a current speedy criterion but don't have any chance of ever becoming an article. We could start to ProD or MfD the lot, but that would put unnecessary strains on those processes for little to no actual gain. Making them speedy deletable would keep this process lightweight and easy. Pages that have been deleted for this reason can always be resurrected or userfied if necessary, but this will be the exception, most are well and truly abandoned. Fram (talk) 13:31, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note that this would, at a very rough count, affect initially some 50,000 pages, and then about 100 new ones per day. This indicates why adding them to the existing structures like MfD or ProD may cause problems. Fram (talk) 13:42, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support provided that the 50,000 pages are dealt with in such a way that the deletion log is not overwhelmed. Ideally also this criterion should be mentioned when submissions are declined. Thryduulf (talk) 13:54, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Its extremely rare but for once I actually agree with Fram. I think a year is generous personally and would think 6 months is more than enough. Kumioko (talk) 13:58, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support these pages have little encyclopedic value, aren't being maintained, and could contain all kinds of problematic material. 50,000 pages would completely overwhelm PROD. I would be happy to support a shorter time period. Hut 8.5 14:41, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support although I'd also support a shorter time, 6 months at the most. Dougweller (talk) 14:46, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - No brainer. Would also support shorter time frames, 6 months seems more than reasonable. If this passes, I'd be happy to create a bot task to take care of the deletions. Just contact me. ‑Scottywong| spill the beans _ 15:34, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with the expectation that we should be particularly liberal in granting refund requests on these deletions. Monty845 15:43, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support As I indicated above, this is not my first choice, but I will go with it as consensus is against my preferred option. However, I don't like the year time limit. In fact, of the eight supports so far, six of us have stated that we would be happy with less so consensus seems to be against a year. In fact all six of us have indicated that we would be happy with less than six months ("I wouldn't mind doing this after 3 or 6 months instead of a year", "3 or 6 months", "6 months is more than enough", "6 months at the most", "6 months seems more than reasonable" + myself), so how about three months? A page that has not been edited in that much time is probably not going to be, and exceptional cases can, of course, be restored on request. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:19, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support at 3, 6 or 12 months, with very little difference in preference in that range. As Monty845 suggests. In most cases, I'd support liberal REFUND-by-request, I'd imagine that most of the other cases would qualify for other CSD. --j⚛e deckertalk 16:58, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suppor 6 or 12 month, (3 months is to short), Recreate on request. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:07, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with preference for the 6 month term. Mangoe (talk) 19:15, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - suggest 6 months, 12 months is almost as good (3 months is too short a time frame IMO) Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 19:41, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. There's a lot of copyvio, libel, nonsense, etc. in these that can only bring trouble. I assume this proposal also applies to the old-style AfCs by date like Wikipedia:Articles for creation/2006-05-03. Kilopi (talk) 19:45, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I'd go for the 12 month time - there could be a change later to 6 if things are building up too much - and there are few returnees. I would think that three could be workable if clearly pointed out in the start-up page - it might make people concentrate more. I am increasingly getting the impression that people out there think they only need to post a title and a name or a single sentence, and magically a team of wiki brownies will fill out all the rest. 12 months for now and see how it goes. Copyvio can be got rid of already, as can attack, but this will cut the amount that needs checking. Peridon (talk) 19:56, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • CommentOppose, shouldn't the real question be whether the subject is actually notable or not? I am OK with stubs, although fully realized articles are of course preferred.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 20:19, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Who exactly is going to bother to sort through 90,000 articles to find the handful that might be notable? Hut 8.5 21:08, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOTCLEANUP is relevant here. The question is whether those subjects are notable or not, if they are not notable, then no article for creation should have been started in the first place; if they are notable, stubs are just as worthy as a starting point for content regarding the notable subject as anything else. Of course we want to work on those articles to get them to become quality content, but some of the greatest things, can start out small.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 22:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOTCLEANUP is relevant only to articles that already exist in mainspace and have been sent to AFD, not drafts that nobody is ever going to finish - remember that the whole point here is that the person who created the draft has not touched it in over a year. Roger (talk) 06:40, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Do we have any stats on how often these old AFC submissions are revisited? I would prefer 12 months just to be on the safe side, but 6 months is also fine, I guess. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:03, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Prefer 12 months. 6 months is OK. Uneasy about 3 months. Note that while G13 applies after a long wait, all other G criteria may be applied nearly immediately.

    I still recommend that if A10 (duplicates an existing article) would apply, that the page should be redirected to the existing article immediately. This is for the benefit of the author. If the AfC becomes old enough for G13, that's OK.

    I would still like it to be mandatory to notify the talk page of the AfC creator on deletion by G13, if the AfC creator was a registered user account. Scottywong, would that be a problem? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:27, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose any expansion into userspace. Abandoned IP AfC submissions are VERY different to a registered user's user space. The recently proposed U4 was rejected, alongside support for this G13. Old abandoned userspace stuff should be replaced with Template:Inactive userpage blanked. MfD nominations for others' user subpage drafts have a very poor track record. If people don't understand that this proposal is for old AfCs and not userspace, then should we write that in big? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:07, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support common sense. --Rschen7754 06:47, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support but Note: Cleaning these up automatically is entirely fine. I would also point out that copyright violations sometimes manage to slip trough, yet after a decline no one may ever look at the page again (Thus leaving a page with legal problems). However, i would point out that editors sometimes revisit their declined article's months after the decline. In part this is due to the backlog being 3 ish weeks right now (Thus people may cease checking often) - but regardless of the reason resubmissions of old pages are quite common under 6 months of age; and only a few days ago i received a question regarding a page i declined 8 months ago. As for savable old pages - the current setup makes this near impossible due to the sheer amount of garbage submitted; searching trough the refuse pile for a gem simply isn't cost effective. I suppose it might be feasible if the AFCH were extended with an "May be decent" checkbox that flags pages as possibly decent. Such an article may still end up in the refuse pile, but at least anyone searching for things to improve would have some means of finding a possible gem. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 14:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, and expand to include all abandoned userspace drafts, including userfied deleted articles.  Sandstein  15:48, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, seems reasonable, logical, and sensible. — Cirt (talk) 17:21, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, if after 12 months someone wants to write about the same topic, more often than not it's another editor starting from scratch anyway. There may be 20% viable article topics among the drafts we'll delete, but how often is such an abandoned draft actually turned into a valid article? That's far less than 1%, I'll wager. Huon (talk) 18:02, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support at any 3 months or + time frame. KTC (talk) 19:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support without reservations, AfC is drowning in crap, clearing the "overburden" would be a huge relief. Roger (talk) 21:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for >1 year. The way to do it, to alleviate the very valid concerns DGG has presented below, would be to set up a system where, for example, every submission made in January 2013 would be placed on a list in January 2014 saying they would be up for consideration February 1, 2014. That would give each round a month of time for interested Wikipedians to take a look and salvage what can be salvaged. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 23:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually, is there any reason why this has to be a CSD criterion instead of just WikiProject policy? If there's community-wide consensus for the action in general, it seems a lot simpler to have it done in-house than to invent a new speedy category that doesn't apply elsewhere. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 23:25, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The reason is that WP:AfC is not owned by the WikiProject, and AfC submitters are not WikiProject members. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:22, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. We really need to get rid of our myriad abandoned drafts, and a year time limit reduces to virtually nothing the chance that we'll delete something anyone remembers or cares about. We can always undelete something upon request. I do agree, however, with Amory — we really don't need to do this as a G13. Let's make this an approved kind of G6 deletion. Nyttend (talk) 23:52, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support and expand to include userspace drafts and userfied content as well. MER-C 02:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for AFC submissions and userspace drafts. However... could we maybe do this like with the 7-day delay feature seen with some of the F-series criteria? That way if someone really wants to rescue a long-forgotten submission, they have a week to add a few paragraphs and save it; if the user doesn't care, they could always just G7 it. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 03:40, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree with the 7-day delay; if the speedy deletion process is going to be run by a bot anyway, this would create minimal extra work with a net benefit. — This, that and the other (talk) 04:06, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support It will definitely help cleanup AfC. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 04:45, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I see no problem with this. AFC is in dire need of cleanup. §FreeRangeFrogcroak 05:28, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, yet I would really like this to be postponed for a month if possible: I would like to see AfC reformed completely, and a first step for me would be gathering statistics on drafts - which will be far harder if they are deleted. (i'm specifically looking for the %resubmitted after decline n, and the %accepted after resubmit n, and if I want to get fancy, find a way to correlate to time it took to review - if this data is somewhere, cool bananas, I want in!) Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:53, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support and suggest that six months is more than enough. It is a totally arbitrary that an article submitted straight to mainspace can be speedily deleted for lack of notability but if it gets submitted via AfC it currently remains there indefinitely. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 13:25, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as a long time helper and script developer for the project. mabdul 14:31, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose making this a speedy process. I'd like them deleted. I don't think that there's any good reason to do it under CSD, which is the "any admin can delete instantly on sight" process. Since there's no urgency here, I think it would actually be best to have a bot tag them for PROD in batches (maybe 100 a day, which will take more than one year to clear out the many-years-old backlog, but which is just as sustainable as doing the same thing with the bot adding a CSD tag), after giving the original editors notice that they've got a week to get it fixed up, or it's game over. This isn't about admin time (because I estimate that an admin going to CAT:CSD and clicking the delete button a hundred times takes exactly as long as an admin going to the expired PROD cat and clicking that same delete button); this is about not biting the newbies and not having to waste time explaining to them why they received zero notice of the problem. It would also have the small advantage of not burying hoaxes and attack pages and other serious CSDs in a pile of unimportant AFCs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:06, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's simply unworkable. The PROD system is often overloaded as it is: many of the declined things would automatically fit the CSD criteria that exist already, and the backlog would increase far quicker than it would decrease, even if you increased your 100 number to something much bigger (which really would then overload the PROD system.) WP:BITE is completely irrelevant, because if the draft has been stale for a year, the chances of that user being active are VERY small (and if they are, they're no longer a new user...) - and if you're worried about it, then you can make this bot send warnings to the account that say "if you don't edit this in the next month, it will be deleted". In addition to this, giving an extra week to an article that has sat untouched for a year is incredibly pointless. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 08:16, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with User:Lukeno94, shifting the overload around is not a solution at all. The pile of abandoned drafts needs to be deleted - that's not disputed by anyone (yet!) - so anything other than getting on with it as efficiently as possible, is pointless "moving the deck chairs while the ship is sinking". Roger (talk) 08:48, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The difference between PROD and speedy deletion is that PROD allows time for review by other editors. The more articles we tag for PROD the less review each one will get and the less effective the process will be. PROD (and BLP PROD) was responsible for deleting about 20,000 articles last year. If we tag 100 rejected AfC submissions a day then the number of articles being deleted by PROD would roughly triple. And even tripling it would not be able to cope with the problem here, as at that rate it would take about two and a half years just to clear the existing backlog. Hut 8.5 12:37, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tossing one's yard trash over the fence into the neighbour's yard does not make the trash vanish. Shifting this overload from AFC to PROD solves absolutely nothing. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think you guys are getting it: Pushing the 'delete' button after a seven-day PROD does not take longer than pushing the same 'delete' button after finding it in the CSD cats. It's the same button. Sure: PROD will have a much higher volume. But the total number of times that an admin has to push the delete button will be the same. In terms of admin time, "Look, it's an abandoned AFC in the CSD category: I delete it!" and "Look, it's an abandoned AFC in the PROD category: I delete it!" take exactly the same amount of time. If you need a human to push the button 50,000 times, then you need a human to push the button 50,000 times. Calling it "speedy" does not make the human capable of pressing the button any faster. The only thing that CSD does is eliminate the possibility of notifying authors in advance—authors who might want to improve, reactivate, or copy their original work, without having to ask someone for a REFUND later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think you're getting it. As I said above, the workload associated with PROD is not simply a matter of pushing Delete buttons. PROD is supposed to be a way of allowing other editors to review the proposed deletion and contest it if they think the nomination is invalid or the article can be fixed. The reason we send things through PROD rather than speedy deletion is because the deletion reason is considered too subjective for the judgement to be made by one editor. The more articles we tag for PROD the harder it will get to give all articles the desired review.

    Furthermore I don't think you're appreciating the kinds of users who use AfC. A large fraction (perhaps even most) of the people who submit articles are unregistered editors. Because of the way the software is configured AfC is the only way that have of creating new articles. It is essentially impossible to get in contact with an unregistered editor about something that happened more than a year ago. If a message left for such a user is read by anyone at all it will probably be someone the IP address has been reassigned to. Even in the case of pages created by registered users it will be unlikely that the account is still editing. Hut 8.5 10:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - It would eliminate abandoned copyvios and potential BLP violations. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 12:44, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - as the original proposer. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:45, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Will help with the backlog. Rcsprinter (talk) @ 11:02, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, would also like to see it expanded to userfied pages, though. Lectonar (talk) 11:11, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support of course as original nominator. --B (talk) 12:25, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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.

Comments added after 2nd closing

  • Oppose The existence of lots of drafts is a natural consequence of the scale of Wikipedia. We do not have a deadline because this is a volunteer effort and arbitrary time limits should not be imposed, per WP:CREEP. Deletion doesn't actually delete the material; it just restricts visibility to admins. There doesn't seem to be a good reason why only admins should be allowed to view such drafts. Warden (talk) 09:39, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
From the top of my hat i can think of three reasons. First, if someone uses the AFC process to create a page using a title that already exists it will append the page to the existing draft (Which is rather messy and confuses users). This is not a daily issue but a larger amount of old pages creates a higher change of this occurring. Second issue is that there are plenty of BLP / Copyright violations that are not correctly flagged as such. Since no-one rechecks old drafts these pages will stay around. A third reason is that most of these pages aren't worth while to keep around; If they had been posted directly in the main article space they would have definitely been removed under one of the CSD criteria by now. Are these reasons enough to remove the pages? Debatable of course but i believe they are. Whether or not you agree is entirely up to you of course Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 13:13, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Deletion after a year of abandonment is unlikely to cause a problem - I could live with a longer or shorter time-scale, although I wouldn't support anything less than six months. In any case, this issue has got to be managed as the number of abandoned submissions is only going to get larger. The upsides of dealing with potential copyvios, BLP violations, and other policy issues as well as clearing the way for future articles are counter-weighted by few real downsides. CT Cooper · talk 13:39, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose- WP:NOTCLEANUP, WP:DEADLINE. This is a volunteer effort. Some people might continue writing some drafts. Others might want to continue someone else's abandoned draft. It is unnecessary to delete them all. They are not bothering anyone. I don't understand the mass support for this proposal. Feedback ☎ 02:03, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I can understand your opposition, but please consider to look at Fram's sample below and see if you really think they are worth keeping... — This, that and the other (talk) 07:43, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: TLDR: counter to WP:OWN, WP:PRESERVE and WP:NTEMP; reviews can be wrong; if a bad article falls in the AfC does it make a sound?
AfC drafts can be edited by anyone who is able to edit Wikipedia, including IP editors. Declining a draft is nothing more than editing it. While I haven't noticed any declinations that looked mischievous, I have seen some that were clearly incorrect. Authors of AfC drafts are typically inexperienced, and may not recognize a wrong declination. Normally when a draft is declined, the helper script posts a message to the author's talk page; as far as I know that is the only place besides the draft itself where the declination is ordinarily recorded. As far as I know, there is no summary page listing recent declinations, so they may be readily patrolled. A reviewer not using the helper script could decline a draft without notifying the author. Many reviewers, on finding a draft on a suitable topic requires work to meet Wikipedia standards, will decline it. For these reasons, the fact that a draft has been declined does not reliably indicate that the draft doesn't "have any chance of ever becoming an article."
The proposal says there is a possibility of harm from advertisements, copyright infringements, and BLP violations and other text in these drafts. Any of these can be grounds for declination, and the most serious ones (as the proposer acknowledged) can be speedily deleted already. If unwanted text is not promptly deleted, it still has little potential for harm: if it goes unread, it does no harm; if someone reads it and considers it harmful, its deletion can be requested then. So long as the site remains in the USA, there's a safe harbor provision under the DMCA for user-contributed media that infringe copyright. There's at least one bot scanning AfC for copyright infringement. I suspect that many of the so-called copyright infringements and BLP violations are by contributors who are trying to promote themselves or a company they work for with text they wrote themselves: these advertisements reach an audience of few to none.
The problem of name-space collisions can be avoided by appending a numeral to the name of the draft. This could be automated.
Having the Article Wizard search for existing drafts when an author uses that would increase the likelihood that an abandoned draft would be completed by a future author.
WP:NTEMP suggests to me that, with the passage of time, the notability of any topic is more likely to increase than to decrease. The fundamental assumption behind this proposal is that an AfC draft is WP:OWNed by a single author, so that if that author abandons the draft, there will be no further improvement. The proposed expiration date would actively discourage collaborative editing by sweeping away abandoned drafts before a second author comes along. In this way, it is anti-wiki. —rybec 06:48, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not sure you understood the proposal, it's for drafts that haven't been edited by anyone for a year, not just the original author. If it's been idle for a year, it's stale, and is highly unlikely to be worked on. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 10:28, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • When I wrote

    Normally when a draft is declined, the helper script posts a message to the author's talk page; as far as I know that is the only place besides the draft itself where the declination is ordinarily recorded.

    and

    Having the Article Wizard search for existing drafts when an author uses that would increase the likelihood that an abandoned draft would be completed by a future author.

    I was referring to ways in which the AfC process as it exists leads to articles that have a single author. Another factor is that drafts are kept under Wikipedia_talk. To search for an AfC draft with the search feature, someone must first find the advanced search, then check off Wikipedia_talk; any results will be mixed in with results from actual talk pages. Wikipedia_talk is not distributed as a data dump, so AfC drafts can't readily be mirrored by other sites. The robots.txt file specifically discorages search engines from indexing these drafts with the line Disallow: /wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/. This intentional lack of visibility makes it unlikely that anyone but the original author will work on a draft; the G13 proposal would further hide these drafts so that only Wikipedia administrators and WMF employees can see them. It would amount to throwing away people's work.
Articles in the main space are much more visible than those in AfC, yet there are many which haven't been updated in a year. To have a script come along and automatically delete them as "stale" would be silly, if this site is still supposed to resemble an encyclopedia. For these draft articles that have been deliberately hidden, the "edited by anyone for a year" criterion is even less valid. —rybec 22:55, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The difference between a mainspace article that hasn't been edited in a year and a rejected AfC submission that hasn't been edited in a year is that the former meets our minimum expected standards of encyclopedia articles, whereas the latter doesn't (assuming it was properly rejected) and probably never will, since the creator is unlikely to come back and finish the job and it is unlikely anyone else will bother. Hiding a page from search results is not sufficient to fulfill our obligations to remove BLP violations and copyright infringements. Pages which are copyright infringements are deleted or blanked, not merely hidden from Google. The fact that the DMCA prevents Wikipedia itself from being sued over copyright violations is irrelevant. If that was considered to be an excuse for not tackling copyright infringements we wouldn't have any policies or processes for dealing with copyright at all. Deleting any page constitutes "throwing away people's work" and hiding pages so only administrators can see them. (As a minor point, it is not true that no Wikipedia talk pages are included in database dumps.) Hut 8.5 08:50, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bot task

If approved I recommend seeing if someone like Anomie would setup a bot task to automate the deletion of these. Perhaps an initial one time sweep of the ones over a year and then see what that leaves us for submission to CSD. Also, I would ask someone like MZMcbride with toolserver/Sql access to the database to create a report for these. Kumioko (talk) 17:27, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any existing deletion criteria where the actual deletion is performed by a bot? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:28, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
User:7SeriesBOT deletes pages under U1 and G7. Ryan Vesey 20:34, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Probably would be best to only have the bot tag the articles, but leave the actual deletion to a reviewing admin. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 21:11, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree, for at least the initial bot run it should do the deletion too, manually reviewing the ~90,000 drafts that are currently deletable under G13 is simply not managable (that number grows by 40-50 every single day). Any deletion can be reversed on request in the highly unlikely event that the author of a draft abandoned a year ago suddenly returns from the dead. Once the 90,000 "overburden" has been cleared the 40-50 daily deletions can be done manually (after the bot has tagged them). Roger (talk) 22:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I concur with Roger. Its likely a small number will need to be undeleted but there are just too many to review every one. Kumioko (talk) 03:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to see the 40-50 articles per day deleted by the bot as well. To go through each article and check the history takes time, and if this task can be reliably performed by a bot I don't see the need to bother humans with it. Admin eyes at CAT:CSD would be better reserved for cases that require human judgement, like A7 and G11. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 19:25, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd prefer to see a bot tag about 10 articles per hour during those times CAT:CSD isn't heavily backlogged (say, don't tag if there are more than 50 items in the cat), until the backlog is empty. If we decide to make them eligible for deletion, it doesn't have to mean we have to tag and delete them right now. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:55, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I like this idea. One of the original concerns was that something worthwhile might be missed. By having a human pull the trigger on deletion, we at least prevent this. Having a bot tag the old articles in an orderly, predictable fashion (oldest to newest) over a couple of months would reduce that concern. At least there would be a chance that something with potential gets saved. --B (talk) 12:28, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
While it is true that some worthwhile pages might be present in the decline pile i don't think that rechecking each page manually is worth the effort. AFC is backlogged as is, and requiring an administrator to check every page before removing it effectively increases that backlog by another 90k pages. After all, how can you judge if something should be removed without reading it? I would also mention that these pages were originally declined for a reason and while there may be some gems in the junkyard the vast majority will be garbage.
If anything i would suggest creating a "Promising new article's" page or something similar. An AFC reviewer could use the WP:AFCH script to mark a page as "Promising" after which it would be added to that list. If the draft would ever be abandoned it would still be present on the list, so it would be easy to find (And perhaps that list could be excluded from automatic removal). That won't save the already present article's but is it really worth the time to sift trough 100 declined article's in order to find one that could be saved with some major effort? I don't think it is. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 12:56, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

data and a substitute proposal

I've unhatted this sub-section per comments by DGG (talk · contribs) below. Please note I'm the same 64.40.5*.*** that has commented in the rest of this page, so everybody is free to revert if they think this was impropoer. 64.40.54.108 (talk) 07:47, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I seem to be in the position of opposing my own proposal, but what I suggested was much more nuanced than this. I have now made an analysis of 170 declined articles taken equally from continuous sections at three parts of the alphabet. 84 of these were more than one year old. Of these 84, 21 of them were possible articles, including 6 needing only minor editing and 6 that could immediately be merged or turned into redirects; the other 9 would need more substantial editing but would then make adequate articles. (for comparison, within the year, there were 25 probably acceptable in some manner out of the 86, a very similar proportion.) This would support a 6 month period instead of a 12 (contrary to what I would have predicted).

This means, that if we speedy-delete all such articles, we will have at 25% error rate, This is too high. A speedy deletion criterion should ideally have a 5% positive error rate, though in practice we accept 10%. It certain rules out using a bot. It also rules out doing more than, say 50 a day so that they actually could be looked at.

What I propose instead as a substitute is , a speedy deletion criterion for 'All AfCs that have not been edited in six months, and would be speedy deletable if they were articles, and those that have not been edited for six months and do not meet a speedy criterion be proddable. That would give more of a chance to rescue those that could be rescued .


DGG ( talk ) 01:56, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Articles for creation that have not been edited in six months and would be speedy deletable if they were articles. Administrators deleting such articles should list both this criteria and the relevant article deletion criteria in their deletion summaries. If such a page has seen no edits in six months but does not qualify for speedy deletion, it may be deleted through the Proposed Deletion process instead." Ego White Tray (talk) 04:19, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, way too complicated for very little benefit. And AfC submissions that could be turned into redirects are hardly useful, what's the point of having an old AfC redirect to a mainspace article? DGG, can you list the 15 pages out of the 84 older than a year that could with some effort be turned into articles? That would give us a better idea of what could be lost by automatic deletion. Oh, and ruling out doing more than 50 a day would be really problematic, as that would only increase the backlog; more than 50 submissions are declined and abandoned every day. Fram (talk) 06:52, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As an example, I have taken Category:AfC submissions by date/10 March 2012, which would under the original proposal be ready for emptying (well, deletion of the abandoned ones at least, not deletion of the accepted ones of course).

So that means that of these 32 articles, 6 may, perhaps, with luck and loads of work, be an article (although for most of them this seems doubtful, none are on obviously notable subjects); I have bolded these above for your convenience. On the other hand, we have some pages that should have been deleted ages ago (copyvios, G10 attack pages). To go through these articles in this manner is a lot of work, something which no one seems to be prepared to do (or at least no one has been doing until now). To put this burden on people as a requirement for deletion is counterproductive to say the least. In the original proposal, everyone who wants to has six months or a year to go through these pages and rescue whatever warrants rescuing; after that, no more effort is wasted on them and they are summarily deleted (with no objection to undeletion if anyone wants to work on them anyway afterwards). In the second proposal, every page would need to be checked contentwise. Who is going to make that effort? This proposal would in reality mean that these pages would stay around forever, just like now, without anyone actually trying to salvage anything from them anyway. Fram (talk) 08:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Strong Oppose - 6 months is more than enough on its own for anyone who wants to do this rescue work (let alone 12). Adding this clause in may as well defeat the whole point of this speedy deletion idea. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 08:41, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as too time-consuming and unworkable. This proposal would require reviewers to examine articles individually and decide whether they meet any speedy deletion criteria. Even for obvious things like copyright violations this would be time-consuming. For articles which don't obviously qualify for the article speedy deletion criteria the reviewer would have to do things like checking for potential sources, which is even more time-consuming. It doesn't seem as though anyone is willing to do all this work, and even if there are their efforts could be better used elsewhere.

    Then there are the logistics of the proposal. A rate of 50 articles a day is simply unrealistic. There are 90,000 declined AfC submissions at the moment, and at that rate it would take 5 years even to process the existing backlog, never mind all the submissions added in the meantime. Counting up the articles in Category:Declined AfC submissions which were declined for a reason that isn't handled through CSD (plot summary, dictionary definitions, essays, unsourced articles, neologisms, news reports, foreign languages, "not suitable for Wikipedia", non-neutral and the various varieties of non-notable) produces about 75,000. Many of those will qualify for A7, but sorting through these would certainly swamp the PROD process, which deleted about 20,000 articles in the whole of last year (including BLP PROD). Any contested PRODs will have to be handled through WP:MFD, which isn't equipped to for anything like this. Hut 8.5 11:01, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • oppose I can see making some provision for someone who comes along and lays claim to one which is salvageable, though in practice if anyone cared about rescuing these, they would have been promoted already, n'est pas? Even if the material could be made into a serviceable article, I don't see keeping the text around in the hopes that someone, some day might come along and finish starting it. The benefits of reducing the clutter far outweighs the loss of article text whose potential is thus far unrealized and whose history shows that it is almost certain to remain in that state. Mangoe (talk) 12:29, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose with regret. There's no interest in reviving even a tiny fraction of the best of those drafts, WP:Abandoned Drafts is for all intents and purposes dead, the articles in Fram's list above which were recreated were likely recreated without the new author knowing about the previous draft. These AfCs are not visible to searching, and so they are, for any practical purpose already deleted. Leaving them in limbo is a problem, copyright and attack problems are too frequent.
Which is not to say that there shouldn't be some efforts at salvage. But since salvaging all of these is (practically speaking) impossible, wouldn't it make sense to start with the newest ones? That is, the fresh AfC submissions for which the authors might still be around? Maybe focus on retaining those new editors and their efforts, rather than those who are long gone from the project? --j⚛e deckertalk 19:39, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I have no problem with generous refund instead. This proposal is complexity without real benefit. KTC (talk) 19:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

reopening

I don't think this has been given adequate consideration. People challenged my numbers. For the survey, I just recorded the numbers. But in addition, I've worked also on those in my own field, Academic people and things, where I looked at every single item in the category. This may be a category where there are more wrongfully non-accepted articles than the others, probably because people tried to judge using only the GNG, and not the alternative WP:PROF and WP:Author. I found 120 out of the 377 that can be rescued. About 2/3 of the 120 older than one year; again, this may be a higher percentage than usual because it contain a good many really carelessly reviewed ones from the earlier years, I'm going to list a dozen or so below to indicate the extent to which we are likely to throw away decent articles if we do not look at them carefully. This is not a selected list of highlights; I'm going thru my alphabetic list from the top & selecting those older than a year sicne the last edit (alphabetically the way they were listed, without the sort key that would be applied to articles)

You might ask, since I had identified them, why didn't I move them to mainspace? The reason is that they first have to be checked for copyvio; I've slipped up once or twice here in the past and I do not want to do it again. I'll have to check one or two a day. Fortunately, even if they get deleted, I can still check them--that, after all, is why I asked for the mop in the first place, and you can check back to see the vote. I could proceed differently, which is accept first and then go back to fix if challenged, but I do not work that way. It makes work for other people, work that in this field I can do relatively well and quickly.

(I'm going to do another sample in another field I work in tomorrow or Tuesday) I will also tomorrow try to answer every one of the objections above---or , more likely most of them. It's of course obvious that some groups of the drafts can be disposed of very quickly, and I tried to make the distinction. Look at my deletion log to see what I've been doing by G11 the last week or so.


  1. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/A. Thomas Kraabel There are enough books listed already--just needs a check that the bio is not copyvio--if it is, I'll rewrite it.
  2. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Abbas Amanat 23 books authored--the article obviously has to be expanded. Full prof. at Yale
  3. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Andreas Lixl also many books, tho it's hard finding reviews for older German books; it's sometimes necessary to check print indexes.
  4. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Andreas Lixl not an academic, but there's a nyt reference and an honorary degree.
  5. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bruce Kirkcaldy Fellow, British Psychological Society.May need rewriting for copyvio or paraphrase.
  6. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/David Yesner Another one that will need to be rewritten.
  7. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cássio van den Berg Taxonomist who has described dozens of species. All such have been considered notable in repeated AfDs. Refs need to be rewritten so they cite his work, not WP.
  8. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Prof. Chitra Weddikkara Notable under WP:CREATIUVE (work at MOMA). It needs rewriting--I suspect the reviewer didnWikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Prof. Chitra Weddikkara actually notice the key content.
  9. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Edward Stabler Full prof. UCLA ; probably notable , but needs citation figures
  10. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Domingo Fernandez Agis Some of it still needs translation, but the books should meet the requirements, tho its a difficult field to find reviews. The reviewer ignored WP:PROF.
  11. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Grant S. Nelson Named professorship. Reviewer mentioned WP:PROf but may not have know what it said.
  12. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Gilbert Ling This one will be interesting, because he is fringe--but he was ed. of major journal. No indication WP:PROF was noticed.
  13. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/József Böröcz Member of his national academy. Otherwise I'd be a little doubtful.
  14. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Julia Bell (author) notable as author, and the reviews were in the article. Might need revision for possible copyvio.
  15. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Juan Carlos Mejuto This will be tricky. Negative BLP, but well sourced.
  16. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Liesbet Hooghe Named professorship at major research university.
  17. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Leonardo Vittorio Arena Apparently a major Italian scholar--again, book reviews are hard to document for nonEnglish books.
  18. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Tarkan Maner Main notability is CEO of Wyse, sources present.
  19. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Wallace E. Oates Distinguished Professorship at Maryland. Multiple books. This will be the easiest of the lot.

I'm less than halfway through; I could go on, but I'm getting sleepy.

I will just comment that Fram found 6 of her 24 potentially article-worthy and not yet written. That's the same figure as I found. T=Fram interprets it as only 25 , therefore insignificant, I interpret it exactly the opposite. 24% yield + a similar number already written is as good as we get of really worthwhile articles no matter how they're submitted. That too is what I found. The older ones are no worse than the newer.

And finding a useful redirect for something less than notable is worth doing. Redirects for creation is an important and valid part of the overall AfC project. DGG ( talk ) 04:57, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"I will just comment that Fram found 6 of her 24 potentially article-worthy and not yet written." No, I found 6 out of 32, not 24, to be not immediately nukable; I doubt that all 6 topics would be notable in the end, and most of these needed so much work that starting from scratch would be just as easy. And I don't get your "redirects" comment, what is the purpose of having a redirect from an AfC to an already existing topic, probably created between the AfC submission and now? If people haven't found the article before starting the AfC, what is the chance that they will find the AfC redirect instead? Fram (talk) 08:34, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The main problem with this approach is the question of who is going to do all the work. Obviously it took some effort to find these articles from the categories. If they are going to be moved to mainspace they will need somebody to search for additional references, rewrite parts of the article, perform copyvio checks, and so on. There is no significant body of people willing to do this work, and closing this discussion with a result of "cleanup the articles and move them to mainspace" would effectively be a resolution to do nothing. On the other hand even the possibly salvageable articles in this list have potential copyright and BLP problems. (Incidentally I don't think academics are going to be representative of all declined AfC submissions.) Hut 8.5 10:31, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not even certain that there's enough hands to tread water on that backlog, nevermind cut into it. And if I'm right that that is the case, I strongly urge people willing to help rescue articles from that backlog to consider starting from the newest end, not the latest--the articles aren't going to be any better or worse, or at least not significantly, but the editors who wrote them might still be around. Working from the new end instead of the old saves just as many articles, *and* helps editor retention in a way that working from the oldest does not. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:34, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  1. We cleared up the unsourced blps, which were much harder problems. A few people can clear up the easier half of the backlog in a year I can easily delete 20 a day while doing other things, say 100 a week=5,000/yr/person. 7 people=1/2 the backlog This half, whether 12 months old or 6 months old, or for that matter 1 week old, are really extremely easy to decide on and determine to be hopeless. The other half need some thought; what I am proposing is to delete the obvious, and not delete the others--not to immediately move all the potential ones into mainspace. That would indeed take more than a year . I imagine that will be done as people work on their subjects. In about 6 months, I expect to do all the academics I found--not necessarily make the articles, but make the 2/3 of them that I think are worth making. (there are other academics, scattered throughout the categories, which I have not yet identified)
    1. Looking at the discussion below, the dilemma is, that we can either do nothing and keep all the junk, or do everything without thought, and throw out the 10 or 15 or 20 % of potential articles. But this is a false dilemma, there's a middle way: to find a rough way of sorting the many likely deletes from the smaller number of possibles.
    2. I see us giving in to despair as we look at backlogs--these, and all the other ones of even more importance, such as the million WP articles that need updating, & the probably 100 or 200 thousand that are overly promotional. The principle of crowd sourcing will work to improve them ass it works to create them. We're a lot better than we were when I came here 6 years ago, and it's due to patient work. It takes work, which we know how to do, but it also takes being patient about it, which is a little harder around here.
  2. Fram, I think I wasn't clear what I meant about redirects. I mean the AfC, tho not conceivably an article, can be edited into a redirect and saved as such. This is the same as deleting it and making a redirect from the title, but it preserves the content if anyone ever wants to develop it. . But even if we decide that saving the content behind the redirect isn't worth the trouble, the occasion should betaken for making a redirect.
  3. Looking at all these in various categories, the real problem is the past and ongoing incompetent patrolling. Too many people have been rejecting articles without clearly indicating the critical problems--confusing the categories for screening, and much worse, discouraging users because they receive unclear and contradictory messages. Again, the analogy is unsourced BLPs. We did two things: we cleared up the old backlog manually, despite the great work involved,, and we took effective steps to prevent a new backlog accumulating by the adoption of BLP Prod. I wasn't all that happy with BLP Prod initially, but it does work, without too many errors--thanks to the relatively few people who patrol PROD and sort out the sourceable that are worth sourcing. There was a proposal at the time to immediately delete all the old unsourced BlPs. It didn't pass, fortunately. Does anyone involve have numbers for how many of them were kept/deleted/ redirected/merged? Even we saved 20%, that was worth it. that project was a good example. DGG ( talk ) 06:15, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The unsourced BLPs project was a major undertaking. The issue was discussed on our highest profile noticeboards and we were able to use watchlist notices to get people interested when the cleanup rate slowed. We had a number of people working on it, and even once the easy articles had been removed the effort still fixed about 50 articles a day. (The most highly active editors put in an awful lot of work.) The early cleanup effort benefited from the fact that many of the "unsourced" BLPs did in fact cite references, and it was easy to identify these through automated processes. Of the initial 50,000 unsourced BLPs about 16,000 fell into this category. Even with all of these advantages it took the better part of two years to get the backlog cleared. I don't have any actual figures for the number of articles that were preserved, but I do have a list of articles in the category, and it's obvious that the vast majority are still blue links.

    As for articles for creation, which has a larger backlog, it seems you're the only editor volunteering to do this work, it would be harder to get editors involved in the project as the issue isn't so high profile, and some of the advantages unsourced BLPs enjoyed are not there. Furthermore it doesn't seem as though most of the pages would be salvageable, and the cleanup effort could be better used elsewhere. You note above that you would like someone to check these pages for copyright problems. As our text copyright processes are all heavily backlogged this wouldn't be a good use of resources. There are over 200,000 existing articles tagged as having no references, and sourcing efforts could best be deployed there. Hut 8.5 11:10, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's not that nobody besides me is willing to do it, but that nobody besides me who has joined in theis discussion has offered to do it. There's a few tens of thousands of other WPedians. As for me, yes, I am prepared to do it for those articles in fields I most work in. I've done it for all those easy to identify. From checking a few other categories, I see that (1)we could delete about 10,000 AfCs immediately under existing speedy provisions, mainly G11 and G2 if we still have it, and G6 for duplicates. (2) about half of the ones over 12 months (or 6 for that matter) are really obviously useless. (3) quite a few are misclassified--not too much trust in screening can be used for the reason someone rejected it. (4) A few are clearly notable and can be accepted and improved or improved and accepted--either order would do, as long as there is a reference. (5). That leaves about half which are probably not viable unless someone really wants to do a good deal of work on them. The main thing that I think is undecided, is which direction to go with these. I'm as eager to get rid of the junk as anyone, and would accept less careful checking that I would think best, but not no checking at all. (6) There are also a large number--at least 5000 duplicate submissions and errors. I think we should simply use G6 on them as we see them, old or new. (7) I do not think we are decided what to do with ones that can be made into viable redirects to existing articles. I would simply want to find some quick way of doing them & getting them out of the way. That's another 5 thousand (8) Similarly, what are we doing about the ones that have already been made into articles? A
My current preferred method is a simplification of what I said earlier, and would require no new speedy criterion at all. Simply for the purposes of speedy and prod treat all AfCs that have not been worked on for 12 months as articles --with perhaps a throttle of 100 a day for each so we don't get overwhelmed. that will deal with all of them in half a year or so, and then we can change it to over 6 months. and get rid of the rest in another half year and keep up ever after. These have been here for years, and there's no more emergency now than there was a month ao. DGG ( talk ) 05:26, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But this will require a lot more work, with little benefit, and will probably have as result that those pages don't get deleted but don't get promoted either (i.e. the current situation). I have been going through old rejected submissions on a case-by-case basis earlier this year, basically doing what you said here, look what existing speedy criteria fit them; this takes a lot of time, while the now accepted G13 is swift and easy. G11, G12, ... already apply to AfC, but are not used: why would people suddenly start checking for A7, A3, ... in the submissions, with the added bonus that some rejected AfC submissions won't fit any of the existing speedies anyway (e.g. neutral articles about non notable books)? These are just a huge dumping ground of mostly poor or problematic pages, with a few potential gems between them. No one was interested in picking up the gems, but still those are the basis to reject the swift removal of the problems. Fram (talk) 08:48, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification

Apologies for the confusion, but it has been brought to my attention that several details still need to be worked out. In particular:

  • Should a new G13 criterion be created, or should this be added as an approved use of G6?

and

  • Should a 7-day delay be used, so that the page is first tagged (and the creator notified), and after 7 days of no action the page is deleted?

King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support the 7-day delay. It is unfair to destroy what are in most cases good-faith creations, and doing so may raise the ire of active contributors who have old, rejected submissions lying around. Even if the deleted submissions are available via REFUND, it would still be polite to give users a chance to salvage their work, or even start improving it. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:51, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
May I also suggest that the deletion summary used for these deletions provides a clear link to REFUND (or perhaps to a specialised instructions page), to help users retrieve their deleted submissions should they ever wish to. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the 7-day delay, it does no harm and is good for maintaining editor relations per This that and the other. Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very strong oppose making this part of G6. That criterion is already overloaded with things it wasn't intended to cover so adding all these too it will make abuses and misuses of it much harder to track. Additionally, the very specific content this covers and the 7-day delay (if it passes) are not something that applies (or should apply) to any other G6 deletion so it would make a poor fit anyway. Better to have two simple criteria than one complicated one. Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 7-day delay per TTO and my comment in the above thread. Oppose merging into G6 per Thryduulf. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 11:05, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I might be missing something, but putting a 7 day delay on it takes it out of CSD and puts it into PROD. Speedy usually means instant for certain things, or a short term delay by admins who think something might get somewhere if the author gets past the first sentence. A mandatory 7 day delay isn't 'SPEEDY'. It's a Proposed Deletion, possibly a new form as PROD-BLP is - maybe PROD-AFC. Peridon (talk) 11:46, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd add that this category of deletion isn't going to affect editor relations. It's for clearing away the stuff that people who flitted in one window and out the other have left behind. (Like the little bird in the lighted hall...) These editors have tried something; it didn't work, so they've gone to play elsewhere (or been jailed, run over, unexpectedly married or spontaneously combusted). If they haven't touched it in 12 months, and they DO get released, divorced or repaired in hospital, and want to try again, we can restore. No problems. Peridon (talk) 16:59, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose both. This should not be an operator overload of the already bloated G6, and it most certainly does not need a waiting period. As long as a REFUND link is displayed in the deletion summary, there is absolutely no reason to beleive that an AfC that has sat untouched for over a year somehow needs to be given more of a chance. See also, Peridon's comments, above. I would, however, support a {{subst:G13-notice}} template with REFUND instructions for the user page of AfC contributors. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 12:27, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • see {{db-afc-notice}}, please improve it. In particular I think we need a subpage of WP:REFUND with specific instructions on what to do for people who want their AFC submissions restored... the normal REFUND page is just too confusing for this purpose. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • So I made a special version of template:refund/G13, and then put the code in the notice template. I then changed the link to make a new section where the template code can simply be pasted and saved without any modification. If a user can select, copy, paste, and click a link, they can get a userfied REFUND. That look good to you? PS, you definitely want to go in and do the "safesubst:" stuff before rollout, because I've never figured out how that works or what it does. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 01:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose both, as said above, if you make it a seven day delay, then it is just a ProD. The idea is that this is a very lightweight, fast process, not something that needs a lot of extra hurdles. Fram (talk) 12:37, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I object to this logic. Look, for example, at {{di-no source}}. It is a speedy deletion template (F4, if memory serves me correctly), but it operates with a delay of several days. Same goes for {{db-t3}}. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:39, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at those, I can't see why they're in speedy. They're proposed deletions. The only difference is that the author isn't allowed to remove them without having rectified the problem. They should be prods like prod-BLP - no-one not allowed to remove tag if not sorted. Speedy is speedy. Can happen any moment, depending. Most of us that work CSD leave some things for a while to see if anything more happens, but take out other things on sight of the tag. Peridon (talk) 09:28, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose both don't see any particular need for a delay, as AfC is predominantly used by unregistered or very new editors who won't be monitoring old rejected submissions. The number submitted by active editors will be very small. G6 doesn't need to be made more complicated. Hut 8.5 12:45, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose nesting G13 inside G6. Deleting someone's submission is not "routine maintenance". On the seven day delay... This sound like giving a seven day notice on every page that it is about to be deleted per G13, which means that there have been no edits for a year. No firm opinion on this. A 7 day pause may be a good idea on first use of this G13, but I wouldn't expect anyone to notice. I would rather see the first G13 deletion summaries invite editors to report problems here, at WT:CSD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose both - a 7-day notice on an article that hasn't been edited in a year? What's the point of that? That would turn this into a PROD-like method, which consensus is already against, and would overload the system with more pointless red-tape/delays. And there's absolutely no need for G13 to be incorporated into anything else. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 16:57, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: the 7-day period is good, and we must ensure that there's a notification placed on the user's talk page. Even if someone has had other things to do than edit Wikipedia lately, they may have email notification that their user talk page has been modified (is that a default, or an option?), and an email to alert them to a message that their draft is up for deletion may trigger them into going back to it. A message to say it has already been deleted will be less likely to bring them back, even if it does explain a way to get it undeleted. PamD 09:53, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose the overloading of G6, it's not a huge deal, but I think it's cleaner, and leads to better tracking, to use a separate criteria. I also weakly oppose the 7-day waiting period, I think it will provide little gain and for a significant increase in process overhead. One commenter above has talked about this being better thought of as a sort of PROD, and well, sure, maybe, but the PROD/BLPPROD process is already layered with errata (the March 18, 2010 cutoff, the difference in lengths of times, the difference in whether they can be removed or not, just to name three) and the tools don't support those differences very well. --j⚛e deckertalk 23:35, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Implimentation

OK so here we have a proper procedurally correct decision to create a new Speedy criterion "G13" - who, when, how, will it be done? A bot also needs to be tasked to do the actual work. Roger (talk) 13:32, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Already added to WP:CSD by King of Hearts; [2] [3] by me. -- KTC (talk) 20:18, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can I suggest that the deletion summary for all G13 deletions links to WP:REFUND/G13? — This, that and the other (talk) 03:26, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. Roger (talk) 07:40, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Shenanigans

WTF? You can't start a 30 day RfC and close it 28 days early—over the weekend—and call it good when you like/dislike the result at that point. And listing an RfC on WP:CENT for 2 days is no way to gather consensus. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, which is policy.

Wikipedia has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of articles. This is because they reflect established consensus, and their stability and consistency are important to the community.

Many people have not even seen this discussion yet. How are they supposed to participate when the discussion is already hatted? I call shenanigans. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 15:56, 7 April 2013 (UTC) [reply]

The count at closing was 29 support, and one oppose who was opposing extending into userspace. I think someone decided that WP:SNOW was in the air. Peridon (talk) 16:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just looked at the instructions - 30 days is default is because the bot removes the template then. It's a max not a set time. (Discussions can be prolonged by fiddling the datestamp.) There doesn't appear to be a fixed timescale, and this closed discussion was a spinoff from earlier talks. Peridon (talk) 16:10, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
When the consensus is so unanimous, a SNOW close is perfectly valid. There's no rule saying that a RFC has to last for 30 days - it can go beyond or below that timeframe. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 16:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • 2 days ≠ consensus I know it's tempting to wikilaywer the issue, but the OP clearly indicated that the limited discussion was not consensus—which is true—and started this RfC to gain consensus. Listen folks, I'm all for getting rid of the problematic AfC submissions, but let's do this the right Way. Shutting out the rest of the community after 2 days is not the right way. We need actual consensus. OK? 64.40.54.202 (talk) 17:36, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • There is no requirement that discussions remain open for some length of time purely for the sake of remaining open for a certain length of time. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. The discussion received numerous comments during the time it was open, and not one person opposed it. You're not opposing it either. There's no need to reopen the discussion. Hut 8.5 20:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Protip: If you're going to try and pose as another person, at least make sure your IP has changed first. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 21:02, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think the IP is trying to pretend to be a different person. "The OP" in their post is presumably Fram. Hut 8.5 21:36, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Correct. That's my fault for not being more specific. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 22:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC) Adding for the record, everything that is 64.40.5*.*** in the discussions above and pretty much everywhere else on the project is me. I figured the regulars here would know that, as IPs with WP:CLUE don't usually join policy discussions. My contribs are here for anybody that is interested. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 22:33, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I unclosed the discussion. Speedy deletion is a big enough deal that we need to do things right. Ego White Tray (talk) 22:15, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you 64.40.54.202 (talk) 22:37, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For example, see this section at VPP, which essentially proposed the same thing (just not institutionalized under a new CSD criterion) and looks like snow-no. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 22:45, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I proposed that and the early returns are no, but a couple weeks from now it may be yes. So I'd like to see where it goes. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 22:55, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That proposal had one major difference from this one: Under it, all AfC older than a year would be deleted, not just rejected ones. Marechal Ney (talk) 04:29, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Back to the initial objection — LOCALCONSENSUS doesn't apply here. It refers to situations such as a group of AFC people deciding at AFC that these submissions should be subject to speedy. Here at WT:CSD is where speedy deletion criteria are decided; decisions made here are meant to affect everything else. Nyttend (talk) 17:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Given that the Village Pump discussion had a radically different view, I think it would be a good idea to keep this open for more than two days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:56, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Given that all the "Oppose" !votes at the Village Pump proposal were posted before the proposal wording was ammended to included the word "declined" (at 23:35, 7 April 2013 (UTC)) the proposal was in effect a substantially different one. I would have opposed that proposal (if it had remained open long enough!) but I fully support this one. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:25, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that this proposal should be given the full 30 days of consideration. The folk who hang around CSD do not represent the general community and so should not try to WP:STEAM this. Warden (talk) 09:43, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • This was posted at the VPP, in CENT, and at the relevant project (and of course as a policy RfC), more notification of this would be overkill (for a bunch of pages that barely anyone cares about anyway). At the time of your re-opening of the RfC after an uninvolved admin closed it (after more than a week had passed), it had 37 supports versus 2 opposes, yet your edit summary on reopening it was no consensus[4]. That's a bit of a stretch... Fram (talk) 13:05, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • My edit reverted an edit which had taken place only 8 hours previously. The discussion still seems quite fresh and I'm not seeing any reason for haste as the pages in question have been around for some time. Like User:Ego White Tray says, "we need to do things right.". Warden (talk) 13:06, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • Which is hardly an answer to the above of course... "No consensus" is quite different from "too soon to close", and there doesn't seem to be a good reason why this wasn't done "right" apart from the fact that you didn't agree with the result of the RfC. Fram (talk) 13:14, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • A consensus achieved by edit warring is not actually a consensus - see WP:NOTAVOTE. The latest faux close says "the exact details in the wording ... are currently being discussed". So the claim is now a supposed consensus for something of which the details are not clear. Shenanigans describes the process well. Warden (talk) 10:39, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bots

What about bot edits before tagging? Basically, the current proposal says that a bot should tag AFCs for deletion if they've not been edited for a year. Imagine that a bot made an edit yesterday to an AFC that was last touched by a human in 2010; do we want this page to be deletable, or do we have to wait for a year from yesterday? In my opinion, the criterion should exclude pages that were last edited by a non-bot in the past year. I can't see how the tagging bot would distinguish between bot edits and human edits, but we could tag the bot-edited pages manually. Nyttend (talk) 17:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do bots edit AfC rejections? If they do, they should definitely be excluded from the reckoning. Last touch of a human hand only. Peridon (talk) 19:09, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that any maintenance edits can be safely excluded, but if a bot is going to automatically be tagging and deleting, then I think you need to be quite conservative, and would recommend only that bot edits be excluded. However, if we're talking about a human being tagging the article, then I would be much more liberal with excluding bots, automated tools (eg AWB), and other maintenance edits (eg categories, stub tags). VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 19:37, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with both of you; I have no clue whether bots edit AFC rejections, and my final sentence is meant to say "bots shouldn't attempt to distinguish between previous bot edits and human edits" while suggesting that we permit humans to tag pages last edited by bots. Nyttend (talk) 21:45, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is a flag for bot edits. Is that available to bots? Even if it is, the follow up would require analyzing the edit history. I'm not sure that the programming involved would be trivial. But if someone takes that on, it would be a standard call available to all bots. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:46, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also, the addition of a {{db-g13}} tag is obviously an edit to the page. That edit must obviously be exempt from the criterion that the page hasn't been edited for a year (so that we don't have to wait for a year until a page tagged with {{db-g13}} can be deleted). --Stefan2 (talk) 22:50, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If pages are tagged by a human, then you also need to allow for editing errors - {{G13}} is not a speedy deletion template for example, and people may use something like {{db-multiple}}. In these situations (which shouldn't be numerous) it might just be best to flag them for human review. Also flagged for human review should be any page (or associated talk page) that was edited after the tag was placed. Thryduulf (talk) 23:25, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't know if bots would be able to see whether previous editors had bot flags; and what would we do if the sequence was (1) Bot edits page, (2) Bot is de-flagged, (3) AFC deletion bot checks and sees that the previous editor doesn't currently have a bot flag? Much better for the AFC deletion bot to ignore bot-edited pages and allow them to remain until humans can look at them. We really can't have any false positives as long as the bot ignores all pages that have been modified since the deadline started; my whole reason for starting this thread was to ask whether humans should be able to tag the bot-edited pages. Nyttend (talk) 00:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It shouldn't be difficult at all for a bot to see which previous editors were bots. That said, bots sometimes do edit declined AFC pages. In the histories you can sometimes see bots going around getting rid of things that don't belong outside of mainspace, for instance. Theoretically there shouldn't be any bot activities that hits a submission over a year after its last edit, but it wouldn't surprise me. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There are always new bot ideas and new tasks and thus getting regularly edits in also very old submissions. But this is only a matter of time when/if the drafts are getting deleted. mabdul 05:43, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Abandoned unsubmitted articles

This speedy deletion criterion is for nominating rejected AfC pages. However, there are probably also some which were abandoned but never submitted for review. Those are presumably neither accepted nor rejected, but they may nevertheless be many years old. What do we do with those? In my opinion, those should be submitted for review in their present shape so that useful articles aren't overlooked. If rejected, they would then be subject to speedy deletion as G13 in 2014. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:32, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have any idea how many there are? If there is only a handful then normal processes should be able to handle them. If there are hundreds that would overload review processes unless carefully managed. Thryduulf (talk) 00:32, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea. If all are submitted for review at the same time, and if there are hundreds or thousands of then, this would probably disrupt the review processes. In that case, it would be better to set up a bot which submits a few of them for review whenever the review backlog isn't too big. --Stefan2 (talk) 00:36, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, let's have a bot submit them gradually; even the worst page shouldn't be deleted until at least one human has checked it. Nyttend (talk) 00:40, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"whenever the review backlog isn't too big" The backlog of submissions wasn't "cleared" since ages - at the moment there are ~1700 submission in the quee. Feel free us to help us! mabdul 05:52, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: mass deletion of all articles at WP:AfC

 – 64.40.54.241 (talk) 03:10, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
WP:NAC, I hope you don't think it's too audacious, but this really doesn't need to be open anymore. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:11, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal was put forward at WP:VPR while the G13 RFC was already underway here. Although some early !votes here seem to outright reject the idea of deleting old AFC drafts, this view has not materialised to any great degree at the G13 RFC above. This suggests that the community believes that G13 offers a better "deal" than this proposal, perhaps because this proposal lacks the necessary safeguards (enshrinement in CSD policy, no-questions-asked undeletion, etc). On top of that, there are variety of other reasons for opposition to this proposal. In any case, since G13 has been broadly accepted by the community while this proposal has no chance of success, there is no longer a need to discuss here. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:52, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: All declined articles at Articles for creation that are over 1 year old—some 90,000 articles—should be mass deleted without further review. 64.40.54.111 (talk) 02:31, 7 April 2013 (UTC) added "declined" per comment below. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 23:35, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. No reason to do so. Diego (talk) 07:51, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Aye, what would be the benefit of doing that? If it's just to try to make things tidier, I can say with some amount of certainty the old submissions pile will likely be a mess either way, so the extra effort required and the added complications of the subsequently non-visible content wouldn't really be warranted. -— Isarra ? 09:56, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Why? How are they hurting Wikipedia, you, anybody, or anything else? Kiltpin (talk) 10:35, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The consensus at Wikipedia talk:CSD#G13: Abandoned Articles for creation submissions is that only the declined submissions should be deleted. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Any submission not declined should be in article space... ~ Amory (u • t • c) 22:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Not necessarily. The page might never have been submitted. People only review submitted proposals. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Is this a serious proposal? 64.40.54.111 has been on Wikipedia for less than 24 hours. Kiltpin (talk) 12:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Not defending the proposal here, and at the risk of sounding condescending... it's an IP address. Contributors' IPs can change frequently, either due to their Internet Service Providers or simply because they've changed locations. An IP with "one edit" could actually be an experienced Wikipedian with thousands of edits who, for whatever reason, prefers to work anonymously. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 21:51, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Exactly. I have many thousands of edits myself, and I occasionally edit anonymously as an interesting cultural experiment. I'm often surprised (maybe I shouldn't be) to observe more disrespect for my anonymous contributions and comments, compared to what I experience when logged in. The lesson I learned from this exercise is that it's best to WP:AGF equally to everyone, and don't automatically assume someone is ignorant because they don't log in. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Even the deletion of all declined submissions is a bad idea. It would possibly have been fine if every reviewer had done a competent job, but that isn't always the case. --Hegvald (talk) 13:06, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support for deletion of old AfC topics about only popular culture and other non-academic subjects. Please read the proposal text itself, it speaks of only AfC submissions over one year old. Wer900 • talk 16:28, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Who, exactly, will define what is and is not an "academic subject"?--Fyre2387 (talk • contribs) 22:54, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose-Frankly, I just don't see the payoff. How would such action improve Wikipedia?--Fyre2387 (talk • contribs) 22:54, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • How does this proposal differ at all from what is already implemented as CSD G13? Is it that this is to delete articles regardless of current work? Why? Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 00:02, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    CSD G13 requires significant manual labor. Someone must tag, and someone else must delete. As a counterpoint to your question, if all such articles qualify for G13 anyway, why not just have a bot clean them up? (It's rhetorical, don't bother answering, I don't support this proposal either). ~Amatulić (talk) 23:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - completely pointless!, Davey2010 Talk 03:17, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. We've got people working on how to go about implementing a G13 criteria to meet this exact problem. This is a jailhouse shiv where a scalpel is being crafted. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 03:47, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The hoard of declined submissions does not present a problem so great that a strategic nuclear option is required. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:08, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Yesterday/Today the project (so davidwr (talk · contribs) and me) updated the Template:AFC submission. Guess what: it takes a half day to update all pages to add a new category. Moreover this template isn't fully protected and thus we getting on a really rare basis a "confused" and autoconfirmed user adding his submission there - Protection is of course a solution, but it is simply a too big workload. mabdul 05:29, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I have protected the template. Hope that helps a bit. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:42, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose - Consensus is clearly in favour of the G13 proposal, and was already against this one before it was moved here. This is not a good idea in the slightest, as drafts may well be being worked on and still be deleted in this proposal. I can give you a clear example of one: a young football whom has made several professional appearances, and when the author is satisfied that they pass GNG, the article is moved into mainspace, maybe two years down the line. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 08:09, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Firstly, this seems like a good candidate for a Prod - there is no particular urgency to force it to be a speed deletion. Secondly, I feel that this is too specific, tied up with the particular details of how the article was created, edit etc, and has nothing to do with the actual article contents Bluap (talk) 15:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I hate to think what it would do to the system while it was happening. We're better to get rid in smaller batches and see what happens. We might discover a rush to make silk purses out of sows' ears. There again, pigs might fly... Peridon (talk) 20:17, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose and note that the proposal has changed since most of the commenters have read this. The G13 proposal has additional and, in my view, important protections that this lacks. --j⚛e deckertalk 03:30, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

What problem is this trying to solve

I thought wiping out AfC and starting clean was the heart of the original proposal. I thought it would be fine to start clean, but everybody else thought starting clean was a bad idea and I accept that. So I started at square one and re-read the original proposal and this RfC. If it's not about wiping out AfC, what is it about? I guess I'm just not getting it. It's not about BLP vios, those are covered by G10. It's not about copyvios, those are covered by G12. In fact it's not about any "G" criteria because "G" covers every namespace. Some people mentioned artilces that would be speediable in mainspace. That would infer the "A" criteria. Some mentioned articles that would be PROD'able and others mentioned a hybrid between speedy and PROD. Could somebody please explain what problem this is trying to solve? A problem that is not already covered by the existing policies. What problem is there at AfC that requires a "delete on sight" solution? 64.40.57.76 (talk) 07:12, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Many submissions are also placed in User-space (and maybe also user talk space). mabdul 08:23, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's about the ~90,000 drafts that were rejected long ago and then abandonned. G13 will get rid of all the rejected drafts that have not been touched for over a year. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:11, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It would be possible to remove the BLP violations (or most of them, anyway) by having editors go through the submissions one by one and check them. Ditto copyright violations. On the other hand there's 90,000 of these submissions and that's an awful lot of work. Who's going to go through those submissions and check them? Is it worth them spending their time doing this, given that the very low value of the remaining pages? (Incidentally neither the A criteria nor PROD apply to AfC submissions. Both apply only to mainspace articles.) Hut 8.5 10:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A bot could also get rid of rejected AFC drafts that haven't been touched in over a year. All it takes is community consensus that a bot can do this work, and then thousands of person-hours needlessly wasted in manually tagging and deleting 90,000 drafts would be preserved to focus on more productive endeavors.
In other words, I don't see the point of this proposal. Why bother with all the tagging and deleting if the objective is a clean wipe? The only effect it will have is to waste time. ~Amatulić (talk) 10:19, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Such a bot would be breaking policy, because at the moment there's no policy allowing for the deletion of old AfC submissions. There's no requirement that speedy deletion criteria be enforced by people, and there is some discussion above of using a bot to enforce G13. Hut 8.5 10:24, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The argument "there's no policy to allow it, therefore we can't do it" is just silly. Wikipedia would never have grown into what it is now with that sort of attitude.
What policy currently prohibits a bot from deleting old AfC submissions? As far as I know, there is none. Wikipedia:Bot policy doesn't even mention deletion of anything. All it requires is that mass actions like mass creations (or deletions) be approved by the community on a case by case basis at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval. I mean, we already have an approved 7SeriesBOT that deletes G7 and U1 pages. I see no policy-based reason that would prevent a bot from deleting abandoned AFC drafts. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:13, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But the community endorsed the deletion of G7 and U1 pages, without restriction on which admins were allowed to carry out those deletions, bot or otherwise. The community has never endorsed the blanket deletion of AFC drafts, and WT:CSD seems like the best place to get that endorsement. I certainly wouldn't want BAG to take it upon itself to endorse out-of-process deletions on the scale of >90,000 pages. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:43, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Doing a bot to mass delete 90,000 pages is a terrible idea as well, as there is some, valid forgotten nominations that could be moved. This needs to be case by case, with the more obvious (attack/vandalism/copyvio/spam) to be deleted under another general speedy criteria. The use is only for subjects that won't survive our criteria for articles in the project and it is likely to be deleted under prod/AFD/A7, notability, essays, and so forth. Secret account 03:37, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think a number of comments above prove my point. G13 actually IS about mass deleting AfC and starting clean. So I don't understand why everybody opposed my mass deletion proposal above. Confused!?! 64.40.54.180 (talk) 00:39, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate proposal - combine G13 and Article criteria

Never mind this section. The other discussions should get priority. Nothing to see here. Steel1943 (talk) 22:11, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

After reading some of the concerns with the new G13 criterion, I saw a few responses that had to do with the fact that there are some stale drafts in the Wikipedia/Articles for creation space that could qualify for speedy deletion under an Article criterion. Unforunately, those entries are not technically articles, so they could not qualify for those criterion. In a nutshell, I propose that the G13 criterion be expanded to look something like this:

G13. Abandoned< Rejected or unsubmitted Articles for creation submissions.
Rejected or unsubmitted Articles for creation submissions that have not been edited in over a year, as well as meet one of the following criterion:
A0. Abandoned submissions.
Submissions that have not been edited in over a year.
A1. No context.
Articles lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article. Example: "He is a funny man with a red car. He makes people laugh." This applies only to very short articles. Context is different from content, treated in A3, below. Caution is needed when using this tag on newly created articles.
A2. Foreign language articles that exist on another Wikimedia project.
Articles having essentially the same content as an article on another Wikimedia project. If the article is not the same as an article on another project, use the template {{Not English}} instead, and list the page at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English for review and possible translation.
A3. No content.
Any article (other than disambiguation pages, redirects, or soft redirects) consisting only of external links, category tags and "see also" sections, a rephrasing of the title, attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks, chat-like comments, template tags, and/or images. This also applies to articles consisting entirely of the framework of the Article wizard with no additional content beyond the above. However, a very short article may be a valid stub if it has context, in which case it is not eligible for deletion under this criterion. Similarly, this criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria. Caution is needed when using this tag on newly created articles.
  • 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.
A5. Transwikied articles.
Any article that consists only of a dictionary definition that has already been transwikied (e.g., to Wiktionary), a primary source that has already been transwikied (e.g., to Wikisource), or an article on any subject that has been discussed at articles for deletion with an outcome to move it to another wiki, after it has been properly moved and the author information recorded.
A7. No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events).
An article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization, web content or organized event that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant, with the exception of educational institutions.[1] This is distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion applies only to articles about web content and to articles about people, organizations, and individual animals themselves, not to articles about their books, albums, software, or other creative works. This criterion does not apply to species of animals, only to individual animal(s). 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. The criterion does apply if the claim of significance or importance given is not credible. If the claim's credibility is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, or list the article at articles for deletion.
  • It is irrelevant whether the claim of notability within the article is not sufficient for the notability guidelines. If the claim is credible, the A7 tag can not be applied. Often what seems non-notable to a new page patroller is shown to be notable in a deletion discussion.
A9. No indication of importance (musical recordings).
An article about a musical recording that has no corresponding article about its recording artist and does not indicate why its subject is important or significant (both conditions must be met). This is distinct from questions of verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion does not apply to other forms of creative media, products, or any other types of articles.
(A10 cannot apply to this.)

...Or, even simpler, convert the "Articles" section of the speedy deletion criterion into a section that can also be used for Wikipedia:Articles for creation stale drafts, as defined in the new G13 criterion. Just a thought. Steel1943 (talk) 06:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Which of these criterions would you use to delete e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Aquarius daily horoscope for sunday july 25, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/arithmetic - first three squares, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/association football career goal scoring percentage, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Attraction 2012, ...? Fram (talk) 09:40, 13 April 2013 (UTC) [reply]
  • I changed the verbiage around a little in the proposal. What this will allow is Article criteria to extend to the Articles for creation space, but still retain the original G13 qualities. The way it is organized might need to be rearranged, but I believe my point is a bit clearer. I added "A0" to retain the original G13 verbiage. (In these cases, if it has been more than a year since they were last edited, "A0".) Steel1943 (talk) 20:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The wording of this proposal actually restricts G13 to only those drafts that would be deletable if they were articles. The "as well as" needs to be changed to "or" if you want to extend G13 to also delete drafts that have not yet qualified as "abandoned" when they would be deletable under the existing terms of G13 anyway. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:54, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose - This pretty much defeats the entire point of G13. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 20:22, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose this would actually get in the way of someone trying to write a decent draft. If your first version doesn't include an assertion of significance, for instance, the article could be deleted under A7 while you're still writing it. Hut 8.5 21:53, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What purpose does G2 serve

I'm wondering: is there any reason why we have G2? I don't see much point in deleting test pages, if we can simply userfy it to a sandbox. This doesn't go for IP editors, but they can't create mainspace pages anyway. Am I missing something? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 23:27, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Inexperienced editors may put tests in the article or template namespaces, and these junk articles and templates are deleted under G2. It goes right along with G1 and G3 as the basic classifications of articles that get maliciously or erroneously created and need no discussion to be wiped. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 23:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) What about an article containing the content 
'''Bold text'''''''Italic text''--~~~~''
What about a template containing 
{{
and nothing else? What about a page with the content 
can i really edit this?
That's what G2 is for. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How can I search the deletion log for deletion summaries citing G2 (or anything else)? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:22, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Um, go to Special:Log/delete, display 500 results at a time, and do a text search in your browser? That's all I can think of. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:17, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
When I search the deletion log in this way using ctrl+f I manually change the url to whatever number I'd like, usually 5000 by adding a zero in the URL. It takes a while to load but is much more useful size. Sidenote: G2 is the most misused criterion. People use it all the time for IAR deletions without naming them as such.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:22, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, I thought 5000 was only available to admins! Turns out I was wrong. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:29, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Is there anything against userfying that? If a user wants to practice with bold and italic text, we shouldn't stop them. We wouldn't delete it in a user sandbox either. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:17, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Among the things I was most wrong about when I was a wee young editor was tagging G2 when it wasn't. Speedily deleting stuff out of process is fine. Disguising it as G2 is not. Even if you disagree that out of process speedy is fine, disguising it as G2 is still a bad idea. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:38, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(1) What about IP editors? Granted, they can't create articles, but they can create talk pages on which they might experiment. (2) Most testing users are presumably not going to care about what happens to their little test after they see it appear "live". I seem to remember that in the past some of the user warning templates for tests included the cute little phrase "Your test worked", which would probably be enough for most users. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:42, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
1. They won't have created a test page in main on account of them not being able to create pages in main. 2. presumably not. But maybe they do. I'm ok with a "click here to mark the page for deletion" template on their usertalk on userfying, which would tag the test page in their own userspace db-self. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:06, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"This doesn't go for IP editors, but they can't create mainspace pages anyway" - but they were able to do it. (and by AfC, but I really hope that never a G2 get accepted through AfC! mabdul 14:46, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't particularly mind grandfathering that in, and change G2 to "A page created to test editing or other Wikipedia functions by an editor who is not logged in to an account". (or something less awkward with the same meaning), but that seems bureaucracy for bureaucracies sake. If such a change would be acceptable but scrapping it altogether isn't, I would be mildly amazed, mildly annoyed with the bureaucracy, but still welcome the change. If there are still testpages created by IPs out there and they would be found, I wouldn't object to G6'ing them. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I most strenuously would object to deleting test pages under G6 as that is not what G6 is for. G6 is for technical and administrative deletions only, G2 is for test pages and there is no need to restrict that based on whether the creator was using an account or not. If things are getting G2ed that should be userfied then we need to either change the wording of G2 to more strongly encourage userfication (perhaps "this does not apply to any page that would be useful as a user page or personal sandbox" or something like that) and/or educate the people who are incorrectly tagging/deleting the pages. Thryduulf (talk) 15:58, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note that the usecase you are talking about here is testpages created by IP's before we changed to requiring accounts for new pages, which is roughly since forever? 2005? I don't think there is any such page in main, and if there is, we certainly don't need a separate criterion for it. I still haven't seen any example of a page that couldn't just as well be userfied. I'm cool with deleting them out off process too, though it really *is* housekeeping. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Prod for IP pages in mainspace would work just as well I suppose by the way. The IP issue is really a non-issue. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:24, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't just about the main namespace though, so the ip issue is a distraction - either all test pages not suitable for userfication should be speedily deletable or none should be. The key question is therefore which is it? If they should be deletable there is nothing that needs doing except perhaps some stronger language about userfication; if none should be then G2 needs repealing. Thryduulf (talk) 23:16, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The point is I assert that all testpages are suitable for userfication. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 08:50, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly not. People make tests to check on syntax, or similar. People make tests to see if they can actually make an article, without any intention to make one. People make pages containing what they know will not make an article, knowing it will soon be removed, just for the fun of it. For all of these, this is the most rational criterion. DGG ( talk ) 04:31, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Two points I disagree with: First, that we don't know if anyone makes something just for the fun of it, or are genuinely testing how something works. The latter can and should be userfied as a personal testing sandbox in case they want to refer to it again, or want to continue testing, and we can't objectively distinguish the two. The second is that deleting stuff like that discourages participation, while keeping it, even in a personal sandbox conveys more of a "cool that you're testing stuff, go right ahead!" which we should strive for. Stuff intended for testing is not valuable for new articles directly, but that's not the point of userfying these kinds of pages at all. Test pages are valuable for our editors, be they present wikidians, or new ones who just want a personal sandbox to muck about with wikisyntax. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 07:32, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose we need some examples. Here's one from AfC: subject of my article is... smegg References: me I suppose that would also fall under no context, except that the article has the name of a person as a title. I just deleted it as a test p, fwiw. There was an article just nominated as no context, with the text being "Hi". But again, there was a personal name and a city. I deleted it as a test p. also. DGG ( talk ) 04:11, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

all the recent G2's I can find are AfC G2's (which generally also could have gone G13), quite often they would have been no content or no context had they been in article space (thus not applying to AfC space). This makes me re-appreciate the (your?) idea of making AfCs that haven't been touched for over a year eligible for A criteria. But I'd rather see AfC reformed completely, i'm just not completely sure how yet. Anyway, if it is indeed used generally as some sort of 'catch all' for no content or no context like blurbs in non-articlespace, I would think that is more of a reason to retire it, rather than less of one. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:17, 14 April 2013 (UTC) [reply]

Proposal to have a bot automatically submit articles in the Wikipedia:Articles for creation namespace

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#An added proposal in relation to the new G13 criterion, as this is not in the scope of speedy deletion Ego White Tray (talk) 12:58, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification edits by Steel1943 (talk) 19:32, 12 April 2013 (UTC).[reply]

G13?

What is the point of G13? It's not like abandoned AfCs take up any room.--Launchballer 15:26, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The same thing can be said of articles that fail to meet notability guidelines, but that's beside the point. Because AfCs are not generally reviewed until submitted, and are not linked from other articles or the random page link, but can still be found on search engines, stale AfCs can end up hosting BLP violations. But mostly, they just need to be cleaned out, and right now, we don't have a process for doing that. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 16:33, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Copyright as well, and to a lesser extent hoax material. And no hands to clean the problems out individually, copyright investigation is already backlogged before this proposal, and it's not a fast thing to do. I think the BLP issues are probably the biggest factor, though. --j⚛e deckertalk 18:24, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the most sensible way to go about this is to just have a bot mark them all individually as being a year old, stick them in another category and then we can work from there. Deleting all of them indiscriminately is not the answer.--Launchballer 18:54, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, but leaving the copyrights, BLP issues and so forth there ad infinitum is a no go as far as I'm concerned. I will be willing to reconsider if you can construct a plausible case that the articles will all be examined. All 90,000 of them, plus another 30-40 per day. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:21, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but a category with almost a hundred thousand articles, that may or may not have BLP, copyright, or any number of other issues, and may or may not even be cogent articles in and of themselves is not even on the same continent as a coherent approach to this problem. Maybe, just maybe, if we had a wikiproject with a couple dozen active members, that exists solely to review abandoned AfCs, then we might be able to make a dent after a couple years, but it's pretty ridiculous to think that's going to happen. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 19:38, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sorry, your solution is to drop a hundred thousand submissions into AfC's lap? Did April Fool's day come around again without my noticing? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 21:09, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • First off, that was some super and almost unnecessarily thick sarcasm. Secondly, no, not "all at once," like you were so implying. Someone on that discussion brought up the idea of programming the bot with a set maximum amount of submissions that can be done a day, which I fully agree with. Adding that much at once would be ridiculous. However, the point is to get the stale drafts noticed in one way or another so they can be properly deleted per criteria created by consensus, and this is one option: to give the old, unsubmitted drafts a set of eyes before they go under the chopping block. Steel1943 (talk) 23:11, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It was not my intention to imply anything. You are suggesting a herculean task, whether done all at once or in bits - spreading it out over two years requires reviewing over a hundred stale submissions per day, and that's just taking care of the backlog. It would require almost two hundred per day to take on the backlog and the AfCs that turn stale in that time, not to mention however many are actually submitted through the current process. Trust me, April Fools' was by far the most collegial thought that came to mind. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 05:02, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. :) Steel1943 (talk) 01:57, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, it didn't. As I've said, the best solution would be to drop a note on the talk pages of those responsible for creating individual AfCs, with IPs and blocked users being dealt with by something else, a job I have volunteered for. The only thing which should be blanket-deleted is copyright violations, which I'm sure the relevant bot can deal with. Steel1943, I have never heard a more ridiculous proposal, and Vanisaac, may I WP:TROUT him?--Launchballer 21:29, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, if I get a trout, I'll grill it and eat it. Read the proposal I linked on this discussion on the corresponding WikiProject; there has already been input on how to add to the idea, as it seems to be going in the right direction. Steel1943 (talk) 23:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As the only admin apparently using the G13 criteria, I would say that almost everything I have read while deleting these stale pages doesn't meet our criteria at all if they were in article space. A large majority of them are spam, serious BLP violations, copyvios and the likes that was either reviewed rather lazy or when standards weren't as strict as it is today. There was several that had to be oversighted because it was pure libel and harassment (including one entry in question that involved a child) and I'm astonished how many of these survived so long. Considering adminstrators always been rather effy in deleting anything not in namespace, this criteria is way overdue. We can't have many of these postings in our search engines, Launchballer you have our interception of our guidelines completely wrong. Secret account 01:16, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I decided to stay away from G13 for now as I'm officially involved by reverting Launchballer and there is some consensus being discussed by categorizing the violations, but I'm going to continue under other criteria. Well the first article I clicked on random, was an negative unsourced BLP about a "porn star" no hits, that is borderline oversight, the second one was spam about a small hotel, the third one was probably mergeable if it is in namespace, (wife of a cricket player) so I left it alone, the fourth one was a copyvio promotion of a non-notable product. I can't believe people are opposing this still considering all the problematic submissions out there. Secret account 02:01, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Secret, you are apparently doing these deletions singlehanded? I think single handed speedies wrong in almost all instances, though I will do it in the worst and most obvious copyvio, vandalism, and BLP abuse, and i admit to recently doing it for some extreme examples of advertising -- in all these cases, to AfCs as well as articles. But in a case like this, where everyone agrees the precise parameters have not yet been defined, doing this by one single administrator without the chance fror another person to check is I think uncalled for. Whatever we decide on the exact final policy, it should explicitly prohibit the single handed use of G13. It is very possible that I would agree that almost all the AfCs you deleted are indeed worthless -- despite approaching deletions of all sorts very differently we agree on individual cases the great majority of the time. But I still think doing this is really over-pushing. I understand wanting to get things started. But let another person check. I assume even experienced admins, are at most 95% right when they want to delete something--I really doubt anyone who claims higher accuracy. If there's 50,000 articles to deal with, that's 125 articles lost instead of 2,500. I think that's an important difference.
fwiw, I remain convinced that the policy that we do this without regard to the potential merit of the article is totally wrong. I think I could convince people in a more general discussion, rather than the repeated rounds here with the few of us who specialize in this, and I think how we deal with even the apparently non-productive newcomers is a matter of general interest. I even think I could convince enough people here, given enough time and effort. If anyone else, such as ColW, wants to start such a discussion, I will gladly join in. But I'm not going to insist myself on starting one -- I've learned not to push too hard against apparent odds. Rather I will do what I have always done here, work on rescuing individual articles. I've already marked for rescue everything I could quickly find in my primary field, and I'm going to keep searching & expanding on this as rapidly as I can. (I'm using the same limitations I do in patrolling prod --I don't touch fields I have too little skill with, like athletes and popular entertainers. And my new personal practice: if it's borderline notable & promotional, it isn't worth the work. DGG ( talk ) 04:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I only realized I was the only administrator working with this criteria after looking at some of the logs yesterday, deciding the fate of 50,000 pieces of content single-handed I agree it is rather absurd. I was focusing on deletions on AFC for the longest time as an administrator, and studied the debate carefully, but didn't realize it was in multiple project pages with some of the strangest consensus for anything I've seen proposed in CSD. There is conflicting consensus on the template itself, with a clear consensus on the wording on G13 and its use, but no or little consensus on how to approach deleting those articles in question, whether to categorizing them, use a bot, and so forth.

I'll admit I was deleting up to borderline rejection material at first mainly because of the refund policy attached to the deletion rationale, but I started to narrow down on BLPs, four year old rejections (as by that point it is clearly abandoned), and obvious promotional/essay material, those that had little to no chance of having an article in the project or needed massive WP:TNT. I did delete material that was candidates to be moved to namespace but already had articles, usually by the same person who originally started in AFC and nothing mergeable. Of course everyone deletion criteria is a bit different, especially when it comes to speedy deletion. Like I tend to speedy delete those that is borderline A7 (or any other criteria) BLPs and very conservative in deleting anything else, ignoring or rejecting them unless its clear-cut. We do need to figure out something on how to deal with those drafts that doesn't meet any of the speedy deletion criteria including notability or those that we know won't survive prod or AFD like student essays. Secret account 05:30, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it helps to have some common understanding about the priority in what ought to be deleted. My own ideas here are very close to what you say above.. I completely agree about removing material that is already in mainspace--which I think should be speediable even if less than a year old--whether it's something that has been moved from AfC to mainspace, or what would otherwise be an A10. I agree about priority to BLPs and very old material. I agree about A7s. G11 is already a policy, and, as everywhere else, I am now very willing to delete a borderline notable article that is also borderline promotional though not quite G11. We do need something to deal with essays, and other unencyclopedic material, and that's why I suggest letting prod apply to old AfCs. I hope you agree with me about the desirability of make redirects out of anything that could be a useful redirect. (We can of course delete and then make a redirect, but if there is any content possibly useful it is better to do it by moving and redirecting.)
The basic criterion for all of this is keeping what is not copyvio and (1) what the original contributor may be able to build on. and (2) what someone else may be able to build on. Something with no potential should be deleted, The difficulty is in making guidelines that give as much guidance as possible to individual judgment. And another thing to bear in mind is that if the ed. is still around, they should be reminded, and asked if they want to do it by the equivalent of A7.
Secret, how are you proceeding? oldest first, and then alphabetical? I've been going by subcategories of specified reasons, quickly skimming with popups for what can be improved on the one hand, or deleted on the other. My next project will probably be as rescan of "non notable academic", then promotional. I hope you will use Speedy nominations, not direct deletions & I plan to do the same--one person may miss seeing something. DGG ( talk ) 16:42, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just to chime in, I have nominated a few myself, poking around AfCs from January/February 2010 using the date categories. I've also improved and mainspaced three borderline notables and one better-than-borderline case, made a few redirects, and so forth. The big classes of one's that got nominated were "more or less empty", "already exists", "hoax", "unsalvagably promotional/G11", "wildly non-notable/A7". A category I haven't seen many of, but that I also believe to be disproportionately important to address, are BLP issues that are short of a narrow CSD definition of attack pages.

Having now seen this discussion, I will hold or at least greatly slow for a bit while the questions being discussed here work toward consensus, and of course, yes, I'll stick to nominations, not direct deletions. I agree with the idea that it's sensible to speedy AfC's that duplicate topics already in mainspace even more promptly.

In terms of the worst problems, yes, oldest articles first makes sense. But to the extent that recovery efforts are expended, please consider newest articles first, as a matter of triage. AfC is constantly backlogged. That is an editor retention problem, which leads to fewer experienced editors, which makes this AfC problem worse. A creating-editor-centric view of this backlog might be just as valuable as a topic-centric one. And emergency room care is often a lot more expensive, and often less effective, than preventative medicine.--j⚛e deckertalk 17:55, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... G13 discussion reopened?

Looks like editor Colonel Warden reopened the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#G13: Abandoned Articles for creation submissions with this edit. I didn't see any consensus or discussion to do so. But, since it seems pointless to start a vote on consensus that the reopening of lack of consensus makes sense, I'm just going to point it out, and let other editors comment here, maybe. Apparently, this is "Being BOLD!" at it's finest.

In fact, I'm going to close the discussion again ... since it seems like the original proposal can be closed with overwhelming support per WP:SNOW. However, it still looks like the details of the actual timeframes for when G13 applies, etc. still need to be discussed. Steel1943 (talk) 01:59, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Considering Colonel Warden opposition and wild accusations that the criteria is being created just for administrators to see the content and the regular users not, that was a bad reversion. I support closing the discussion for G13 again. Secret account 02:07, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I went ahead and closed it again, with a comment added to my closing that hopefully can have other editors understand why it was "reclosed". Steel1943 (talk) 02:10, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I laughed out loud at the notion that deletion is just an effort for admins to keep the deleted content to ourselves.—Kww(talk) 04:56, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • As discussed above in the Shenanigans section, the RfC should have been allowed the standard 30 days for discussion. It seemed that user:King of Hearts was edit-warring in his repeated attempts to close this and so my action was to revert this and I did so just 8 hours after that close. As it now seems that Secret is deleting the articles in question, while the details are still being discussed, it still seems that the matter is being improperly rushed. Warden (talk) 10:57, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rubbish. 30 days is not compulsory, there was no edit-warring going on, and consensus had been formed already, whether you like the consensus or not. Some of the details may still be being discussed, but the basic guideline is there, and thus, it can, and indeed should, be used. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 13:06, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • We agreed on doing this in some manner;we did not agree of the manner. We still need to determine that. We cannot have a G13 without specificity on how to do it. I suggest we remove it from the policy page for the time being, and for Huggle, until we have consensus on just what the specifications should be. I have no object to the close on whether we need some such guideline., but we need another more focussed discussion on just what it should be. See the discussion between me and Secret above, where we compare ideas. DGG ( talk ) 16:53, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support DGG's idea to temporarily delist the {{db-g13}} from WP:CSD until more consensus-agreed terms of the criterion can be made. Steel1943 (talk) 01:58, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support and note that SmokeyJoe has delisted it from WP:CSD. --j⚛e deckertalk 03:14, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Weird. I was mistaken, my apologies. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:56, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, if you want to delay G13 until there are "specifications", could you please start a proper discussion on them? As far as I can tell, most people in the original RfC and first follow-up agreed that G13 is wanted, and no extra hurdles should be implemented (waiting period and so on). Waiting until most people thought this discussion was closed, and then implementing all kinds of hurdles among the few remaining people here, doesn't seem to respect the consensus from the previous discussion. Either start a sub-RfC or simply implement the thing without further restrictions, but don't let it hang around in eternal limbo. "We cannot have a G13 without specificity on how to do it. " is not correct of course, we can easily have that. It's not what you prefer, but that doesn't mean that it isn't feasible. People have already deleted pages under G13, and nothing broke down or blew up. Fram (talk) 08:15, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good idea. I'm going to do that right now ... so we can finally get to the bottom of this. Steel1943 (talk) 08:19, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • At this point, I also Propose to close all other discussions related to G13 so that at least the basic parameters of the criterion can be determined in a method that doesn't have 10 discussions happening all at once. Steel1943 (talk) 08:50, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

G5: what's the point?

If an article wasn't deleted upon creation then it presumably is in line with all of Wikipedia's policies - why then, some time later, would it be necessary to revisit it solely due to its creator's decisions (to do whatever it is they did to get them blocked)? Articles are independent from their creators as soon as they're written and should be judged on their own merit.

If the articles fall under any other criteria then they should be tagged as such (and if it's a more complex case, potential copyvios included, then AfD/CCI is there for a reason) - G5 is insubstantial by itself. Thus, I ask: what is its purpose, and if it doesn't have one why can't it be removed? -- Mentifisto 02:34, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

G5 is for an article created in violation of a ban or block. It does not apply to articles created by users who were blocked or banned at a later time. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 02:50, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A couple months ago, there was a case where an editor blocked for disruptive behavior nominated an article for deletion in retaliation for being blocked. The articles for deletion discussion page was deleted under this criteria for that reason. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:21, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
True, but he made that nomination while he was blocked, using another account, correct?—Kww(talk) 04:09, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's the point behind G5. It applies the same rationale of the closed deletion discussion to articles, templates, and categories created by banned or blocked users. This applies to topic bans, sockpuppets, meatpuppets, or any other kind of evasion. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 04:49, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then again, I remember tagging an AfD under G5, and was told it didn't apply to AfDs... depends on the admin, I guess. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 20:49, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

G13 - The discussion for the official criterion

This is an attempt to centralize and clarify the remaining criteria up for discussion regarding what should be implemented into the criterion of G13. Below are the major topics up for debate; from what I am seeing above, all other miscellaneous proposals were either "no consensus" or "unsuccessful" per WP:SNOW: Steel1943 (talk) 23:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How much time before an AfC draft becomes eligible for G13?

Since there were three time frames that were popular over the others, they are stated below. To vote, please put a hash under the timeframe of your choice, as well as your signature and any additional comments.

1 year

Vote here if the criterion should apply to drafts that have not been edited during the previous year.
  1. I think that being conservative with G13 applicability will greatly reduce any additional strain on WP:REFUND, and since AfCs must still meet BLP and copyright policy, we have a good method for dealing with definitely problematic AfC content. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 17:55, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. There is no harm in being over cautious. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. One year is really simple to explain and calculate, and people, such as tentative editors, tend to live in an annual cycle. If a page is not offensive for a week or two, then it is not offensive for a year. Keep in mind that the other G criteria remain available. When we have experience with the use and problems with G13, then modify it for efficiency. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:28, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. mabdul 12:11, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Miniapolis 23:54, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. This is such a landmark change (it will likely go from no criterion to the most used criterion, and will delete stuff regardless of potential merit to the encyclopedia, based on lacking the workforce to deal with it in an other way), that we should be extremely conservative with the implementation parameters. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:32, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. They aren't in mainspace. As long as there are no BLP or copyright issues, there is no reason they can't hang around for a while. (If they do have those issues, there are other ways to deal with them.) A year is a nice obvious time period at a glance. There is no reason to rush such a process. (Six months is a distant second choice.) LadyofShalott 12:50, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Simple and can be far more sure that the user won't come back to complete their draft. Will also live with six months though; would oppose three months as too short. CT Cooper · talk 20:23, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. What's the rush? ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 23:36, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

6 months

Vote here if the criterion should apply to drafts that have not been edited during the previous 6 months.
  1. Support 6 months. Steel1943 (talk) 08:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support, with 2nd preference for 1 year. 3 months is really too short. Fram (talk) 09:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support. One year would also be fine with me. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:46, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support. One year as second option, 3 months way too short... Lectonar (talk) 11:46, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support for 6 months. One year is too long, it doesn't take that long to know that something is abandoned. 3 months would be acceptable. Peacock (talk) 12:19, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support. Strikes a reasonable balance between allowing newbies to work on submissions that have a chance and cleaning out the crap in a timely manner. MER-C 12:25, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support If we do both rejected and unsubmitted drafts, I have a strong preference for them having the same time frame. The 7 vs. 10 day differences between PRODs and BLPPRODs are a slightly uncomfortable itch that one can't quite scratch. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:04, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support, but also happy with a year. Not happy with three months, as these are (theoretically, at least) works in progress. Articles that get A7 are supposed to be articles that should stand on their own feet, but don't have what it takes. ("Shaun is aaawwweeessssoooommmmmeeeee!!!!!" is never going to stand, as he obviously is very unawesome. Others can be restored easily if the author or someone else wants to have another go.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peridon (talk • contribs) 15:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC) "Ooopppsss" Peridon (talk) 21:21, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support would also be happy with a year, though three months is a bit short. Hut 8.5 15:48, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support - One year is also fine, three months, not really. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 17:31, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support, second preference one year. JohnCD (talk) 19:29, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support. As with most above, second option is 1 year. I wish those who did AFC better understood the applicability of existing criteria. When this was first implemented I started looking at at the categories for different types of rejections and after emptying out some I came across an entire category of AfCs declined as copyvios. That is, a populated category, with everything inside it being retained copyvios, all of which should have been G12'ed immediately.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support Things which are obvious no-hopers will probably be A7. (And there's always WP:IAR....) —Tom Morris (talk) 11:45, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support I think 6 months is more than enough time. Gigs (talk) 15:46, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support Anywhere from 6-12 months is fine with me JayJayWhat did I do? 17:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  16. support - although i would like to see any evidence of any article that had been in the AfC for longer than 3 months where anyone came in to fix it. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:10, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Support, six months seems reasonable and logical. — Cirt (talk) 18:15, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Support - 6 months is much better than 1 year. Command and Conquer Expert! speak to me...review me... 23:36, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Support - The current policy of waiting for 1 year seems like an overly long period of time. Although I can understand the need for conservatism on such a significant issue, articles untouched for 6 months seem to have been taken off of the back burner and left on the counter. It's doubtful that anyone will return to an AfC after that period of time. I most strongly oppose a lower limit of 3 months, though. Chri$topher 15:12, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

3 months

Vote here if the criterion should apply to drafts that have not been edited during the previous 3 months.
  1. Support. Consider an article that is submitted straight to mainspace and gets speedily deleted typically for A7, lack of notability. If the same article is submitted via AfC it hangs around for weeks. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 10:48, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Additional comments for G13 time

This section is for additional comments regarding this entire discussion.
  • So let's suppose in the end we get something like 40% support 1 year, 20% support 6 months, 40% support 3 months. Then what do we do? We can choose either of the extremes without offending the other. Clearly the logical choice is 6 months, even though it is the least popular, under the condition that supporters of 1 year or 3 months are willing to compromise. So I think !voters should specify their preferences should their first choice not be chosen. Otherwise, by default, 1-year !voters are expected to have a preference order of 1 year > 6 months > 3 months > reject G13. For 6-month !voters, it's 6 months > 1 year = 3 months > reject G13. For 3-month !voters, it's 3 months > 6 months > 1 year > reject G13. If your preferences deviate from these "expected" values, then be sure to make this clear in your !vote. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • For now, the best option would be to see if any one choice has preference per WP:SNOW. If not, then those values can be determined at a later time. Right now, the point of this discussion is to centralize these values, not determine which one's vote holds more weight over the others. Steel1943 (talk) 08:55, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, see User talk:Passioninyou and Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Passion In You which was deleted today, but was created in November. Begonia Brandbygeana (talk) 15:39, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note that I marked their user page for deletion, however not their AFC as we generally just decline as spam, however as noted the account is now indeffed and it came from the "about us" page anyway. Begonia Brandbygeana (talk) 11:12, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That was deleted quickly because of the copyright, not G13 issues. However, I did procedurally err (and I've already noted this and said I'd avoid it in the future elsewhere) in deleting it rather than tagging it for review by a second admin. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:46, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Should G13 pertain to just rejected AfC drafts, or both rejected AfC drafts and unsubmitted AfC drafts?

There also seemed to be discussions to apply this to just rejected drafts, or both rejected drafts and unsubmitted drafts. (Previously established consensus was formed that G13 should at least apply to rejected drafts.) So, which type(s) of drafts should be eligible for G13? To vote, please put a hashtag under the AfC draft type(s) of your choice, as well as your signature and any additional comments.

Rejected drafts ONLY

Vote here if the criterion should only apply to rejected AfC drafts.
  1. Support rejected drafts only. Steel1943 (talk) 08:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support. Note that "unsubmitted ones only", the option below, is not really an acceptable option, as that was clearly not what was proposed and supported in the main G13 discussion above. Including unsubmitted ones as well is a possibility, but excluding rejected drafts, what the "unsubmitted ones only" would do, would simply contradict the originally agreed upon new criterion. I have no objection against including unsubmitted ones, but I would like to have some numbers about them first. Fram (talk) 09:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • True about the "unsubmitted ones only only" not even being an option due to previously established consensus. I went ahead and reworded this discussion, and removed that choice. Steel1943 (talk) 09:45, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support. We already have WP:STALEDRAFT for instance of old, unsubmitted AFCs. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Some people may have stopped when they were almost done, and some unsubmitted AfCs might be acceptable as articles. Let's get a bot to submit them all for review first. Fine to delete immediately if they satisfy any other speedy deletion criterion, of course. --Stefan2 (talk) 16:35, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Was the other option ever seriously up for debate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amorymeltzer (talk • contribs) 22:27, 15 April 2013
    • The other option was essentially mentioned from time to time, but was neither formed into any type of "support/oppose" voting system for discussion, nor worded as specifically as this. Steel1943 (talk) 00:58, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. mabdul 12:13, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Oppose [rejected drafts and unsubmitted drafts], only rejected submissions. Pages are checked fast, let us do a review on the not submitted submissions and let us review them. Then, a year later, we simply can delete them under G13... mabdul 05:16, 23 April 2013 (UTC) merged by King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:21, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support There are situations where an editor may have written a decent draft yet hasn't been able to submit it (Regularly we receive questions of that nature because the AFC submission template was accidentally removed or changed to its collapsed format). Unlike declined drafts i would say it is preferable to look these drafts over before deleting them. Note that i am under the assumption that a bot will be utilized to delete the old 90k pages, thus the distinction between rejected and never reviewed. If this assumption is incorrect i am in favor of marking both types for deletion straight away. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 07:51, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support this option. I could support a new prod process for unsubmitted drafts, but people should get some sort of warning before their draft goes poof. If it's hung around long enough to go "stale", 10 more days will not hurt, and might be what's needed to encourage an editor to finish up the work. LadyofShalott 12:58, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support although I opposed the creation of G13, and although my position was opposed it was closed as "Unanimous Consent", the only deletions that should occur, when using G13, is when the AfC draft is proposed, and fails its review. This way there is a process where it can be seen if the subject meets notable or not.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 02:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rejected drafts and unsubmitted drafts

Vote here if the criterion should apply to both rejected AfC drafts and unsubmitted AfC drafts.
  1. Support If it's abandoned, it's abandoned regardless of whether it has been formally submitted or not. Peacock (talk) 12:20, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support. The same problems (BLP, attack, copyvio, spam) exist here, but worse because they haven't been screened yet. Perhaps the time to deletion should be increased as a compromise. MER-C 12:24, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support the arguments concerning the deletion of old rejected drafts also apply to unsubmitted drafts. If anything the problem should be worse because these pages haven't received any sort of review at all. Hut 8.5 15:48, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support - If they're unsubmitted and 6 months/a year old without being edited, they're stale, and should go. Unsubmitted drafts are often worse, for the reason Hut 8.5 gave. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 17:33, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Strong Support - It has to apply to all stale drafts. The entire point is to get rid of marginal or otherwise problematic content that doesn't get reviewed by the normal editorial process. If anything, unsubmitted drafts are more problematic because they have undergone no editorial review. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 18:04, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support per MER-C and Hut8.5, particularly because of attack pages. SuperMarioMan has been doing a good job recently flushing out attack pages that have been lurking, sometimes for years, in the AfC archives, but we shouldn't have to rely on him to do that. JohnCD (talk) 19:33, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support. I see no good basis for making a distinction, plus the un-reviewed/screened issue noted above militates toward including unsubmitted. We are making it fairly user friendly to seek undeletion with the new mediawiki deletion dropdown summary that points to Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion/G13 (which will need to be tweaked if the criterion changes from what it was before), so I see little harm for the few people who will actually seek to continue after 6 months of inactivity.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:46, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support Subject to my caveat somewhere in this lot about the author not being around (in which case, contact should be made). As with all this stuff, if anything having real (and I mean real) potential can be rescued. I would second JohnCD's thanks to SMM - I'm amazed at the crap he's digging out of AfC (and other places). A lot of it indicates that patrolling and reviewing have tightened up, but there is some far more recent that should have been tagged on first sight - even by the most inclusionist editor. Peridon (talk) 10:29, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support , preferably with some sort of nod to active editors with inactive drafts. In that case, they can always be deleted elsewhere if necessary, and who knows, perhaps they'll be improved and mainspaced once the editor is reminded. (Removed the "preferably..." explanation, I think there are arguments on both sides of this, and I don't feel strongly about it, so I'll leave it simply at "I support some version of this option.") --j⚛e deckertalk 00:50, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Strong support - AFC isn't a free web host; it's a temporary place for potential articles. If the article was abandoned at a point where it wouldn't possibly make it into the mainspace, it should be deleted. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:10, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Mixed bag depending on timespan outcome. I would support in case of a year, but not for a shorter term. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:33, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support we already delete stale drafts unrelated to the AfC process. We go through the motions of an MfD for them, but in most cases it's uncontroversial. If it's controversial, then give them the draft back and send it through MfD if it's still objectionable for some other reason than staleness, or give them some more time to work on it. A check on how active the editor is would be fine with me and could be put into the twinkle logic. Gigs (talk) 15:57, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  13. support -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:12, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support - At anytime an AfC submission about a non-notable subject is rejected and has no potential of ever going into mainspace, or where the draft has no chance of being submitted as its primary contributor has ceased editing or been blocked, it makes sense to delete them. But anything shorter than a 6-month timespan should go to MfD instead, unless the editor responsible for the draft/submission has been indeffed for any reason. hmssolent\You rang? ship's log 01:14, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support, essentially per PCock (talk · contribs), above. — Cirt (talk) 18:15, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Support: 6 month old denied drafts, 12 month old unsubmitted drafts seems to me to be the best way to go about this. — Train2104 (talk • contribs) 20:51, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I would be happy with that as well, but I'm just a bit worried about having too many different criteria. My understanding is that the more complex the CSD eligibility, the more likely we are to have errors. So I think we would want to establish a pretty compelling justification for two separate timeframes. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 06:39, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Vanisaac, my thoughts exactly. That was the reason why the section below had to be put on hold, at least until the basic points of this criterion get ironed out. Steel1943 (talk) 06:53, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comments for G13 AfC type(s)

This section is for additional comments regarding this entire discussion.

If this isn't expanded to include unsubmitted articles, it seems to me that submitting unsubmitted drafts is a plasuaible alternative. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:17, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If the unsubmitted stuff has been around for a year and is clearly AfC stuff, I'd say definitely plausible - if the author has not edited for at least six months. If it's a user space draft, and the author is still around, then no. Peridon (talk) 15:38, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say more generally, "if the author is still around, ask first", yes, for sure. --j⚛e deckertalk 20:46, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but if they don't agree, what then? Do we then require them to submit their AfC? How long do we have to wait for a reply? You are suggesting a process that is going to absolutely swamp efforts to clean out all this content that is not currently under any editorial review, because every single article has to be researched as to whether a contributor has edited in X amount of time, and then you have to remember to go back and check on their response. That is a huge management problem replicated over tens of thousands of articles. As it is currently implemented, if the author is still around, they'll get a notice and instructions for WP:REFUND if they want to userfy. If it turns out that the process is bringing too much traffic to REFUND, then we can look at tightening up on the criteria, but convoluted is not a good CSD process, and is directly antithetical to how CSD works: "The creator of a page may not remove a speedy deletion tag", and "A creator who disagrees with the speedy deletion should instead click on the Click here to contest this speedy deletion button which appears inside of the speedy deletion tag." Why does the standard CSD process, plus the additional G13 notification requirement and the REFUND process not work for you? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 21:40, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm, help me out, how many of these, that haven't been touched for six months, are still the work of active editors? I'd assumed a very small percentage. As for process, I'm more than happy with "work on the article or it will be submitted next week for you." That's lighter weight than a REFUND, if there are going to be a high percentage of REFUNDs for the relevant cases. --j⚛e deckertalk 22:07, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If it's as small a percentage as you think, then the effort to check on the contributions of an editor for each AfC is even more onerous, and having to check back is even more of an outlier in process. Not to mention that we would have to find some sort of definition of an active editor. Does one edit this month count? How about several dozen three months ago? Again, why is a REFUND to user space inadequate to such a minor concern? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 23:11, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The check on the contributions of an editor is easily calculated by a bot. A REFUND will require human attention, and it annoys a well-meaning active editor in the case of a well-meaning active editor. Annoying existing editors isn't minor, it's part of why we have an editor retention project. That having been said, I don't hate the REFUND answer, I just lean the other way with what I know so far, please note I haven't given a support or oppose on this question. --j⚛e deckertalk 06:27, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep in mind it will reduce load at MfD, so much of what we see there could have just been speedy deleted. If it is forced through MfD, then a REFUND might fail due to consensus against keeping. Speedy deletion with no bias against giving it back to them if they ask makes more sense in my eyes. We can always monitor the situation at REFUND and if it's overwhelming, we can change the policy again. We don't have to try to speculate about all the potential repercussions right now, we can try it and see. Gigs (talk) 15:54, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:36, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"I'm sorry, but if they don't agree, what then?" If any editor in good standing doesn't agree with a deletion, then it is not speediable. Take it to MfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:39, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I still think that an AfC page should not be speedied if its original author is active. Checking on this should be easy for a bot, and such cases are supposedly very rare. -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by SmokeyJoe (talk • contribs) 06:42, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's something, although I'm wondering on what basis you ask for MfD; but I was actually talking about the larger problem of what to do. If the author objects, do we give them X amount of time to submit? Do we just ignore it for another (year/6 months) until it comes up for G13 again? How much notice do we have to give them before just deleting the junk? You have suggested the beginnings of a procedure; I want to know the other three quarters. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 19:58, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I ask for an MfD on any userspace content where something thinks it should be deleted and the user does not.

If the author objects, it should NEVER be speediable per G13. Better to userfy for them, with MfD being an option at all times. The problem with AfC is the massive ammount of abandoned material. The very few pages where an active user actively speaks for the material are not the problem with old AfC. If the author ever objected, use MfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:34, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So are you saying that a G13 eligible AfC should be automatically userfied if the editor objects? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 03:19, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If an AfC author objects, options include: Mfd; userfication; leave it alone; help the author improve it; help the author understand the project. The intent of G13 is to deal with abandoned submissions. If someone is defending the existance of an old uneditied rejected AfC submission, its not abandoned. This is extremely hypothetical, isn't it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:37, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We seem to be agreed on (1) removing material that is not ever conceivably usable for articles (2) removing material that nobody is working on that is not reasonably likely to be made into articles by them or anyone else (3) deferring action on material that, while harmless, is unlikely to make an article, but possibly still is being worked on, (4) not removing material that might reasonably make an article and possibly is still being worked on.. But we do not seem to be agreed on (5), the advisability of removing material that might reasonably make an article but is clearly not being worked on.
We seem to have lost sight that there is no need for this process to be fast -- in the sense that speedy deletion of harmful material must be fast. We are all agreed that it ought to be easy, because of the large amount of material to deal with.
I therefore suggest that we are discussing the wrong procedure: the appropriate process for material that should be deleted but is not of any actual urgency is Prod. When material is exposed to the community for a week, it is up to those who might be interested in a subject o pick it out and work on it or at least set it aside for working on. I therefore simplify further my original simplified proposal: after 6 months inactivity, AfCs, submitted or not submitted, be subject to Prod. If the Prod is removed, they are then, as now , subject to MfD. I can't see how anyone could say why a faster procedure than 7 days is necessary for already 6 month-old material, Prod already is subject to refund--we need no special provision. Prod can be for any reason justifying deletion--we need not try to find special rules. Prod can be removed by anyone -- people can use their own standard of what is rescuable. All we might need is the way of special rules is that the prod is repeatable after another 6 months. I think we could easily accommodate 40 or 50 a day into the prod stream. , which would clear them out in a year or so--perhaps quicker if we made a effort to stop the ones that could go by existing speedy General criteria. DGG ( talk ) 04:12, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
DGG, I was actually thinking along the same lines regarding this prior to trying to figure out some way to get this discussion arranged in a way that would be a bit simpler, and here's a proposal that I came up with that could possibly fall in line with some of these thoughts: when an article is speedy deleted for G13, there should be a bot created that scans the recently deleted articles for the G13 "proof of deletion" in the deletion notes, finds the original author of the draft in the edit history, then posts a notification in a new section on the user's talk page about how to go to Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion/G13 to revive that article. I could see some editors taking advantage of this, but not all, and not even most. (On a sidenote, there is an editor who stated trying to build such a bot to perform such a task, but I'm not so sure how far along that task is.) Steel1943 (talk) 04:26, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Or, as is discussed in the #Implimentation section, above, we place the {{Db-afc-notice}} on the user page. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 06:59, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, there's already a template created just as I was stating, it seems. Thanks for pointing that out; that whole conversation seemed to have been missed in the whole lot of discussion happening right now. So, that template ... could either be manually put on the article creator's page by the deleting administrator, or a bot. Either way works ... as long as the author of the draft is notified of the deletion and the WP:REFUND/G13 process. Steel1943 (talk) 07:22, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I personally believe it should be mandatory to place it, which is one of the reasons why I so strenuously object to getting permission from still active editors to delete their stale AfCs. If you require notification of REFUND, there's no reason to start out with some onerous permission scheme. The back side of that is that if we have a high REFUND rate, then it probably would be better to get permission from editors, but we won't figure that out until we actually start implementing deletions and doing the db-afc-notice. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 08:25, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly agree with DGG and Steel about a prod process, similar to BLPprod. If it's hung around long enough to go "stale", 10 more days will not hurt, and it might be just what is needed to encourage an editor to finish up the work. LadyofShalott 13:13, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've proposed prod for drafts before, it met a lot of opposition. Hopefully consensus has changed on that idea. Gigs (talk) 14:36, 22 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Again, PRODding stale drafts will just overload the system, and it won't decrease the backlog. Also, what about including Wikipedia:Article Incubator pages that have been unedited in a year (or six months, if that is what is implemented)? That would take some more work away from the MfD system, and those articles are very similar to AfCs in some ways (especially as 90% at least will have been previously deleted due to lack of notability, or something similar.) Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 14:42, 23 April 2013 (UTC) [reply]

The incubator is basically dead. I think we need a little more decisive solution for the stale incubated articles. Gigs (talk) 20:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Prodding will not overload the system. Put in 50 articles a day, a week later 90% of them get deleted without anyone being worried about it, and nobody having to do any more screening than they want to. We may have to revisit the 10%, but the problem has been reduced by an order of magnitude. It's just as easy for us admins who have to do the deletion--in fact, it's easier, because we can assume that the 7 days will have led to the rescuable being rescued, and only a sanity check is needed. It's just as easier or easier for the people nominating for speedy--ig they make an error, there will be time for it to be picked up. Prod is a very safe process, and an effective one. If many should be removed, and challenged at mfd, and deleted there, yes, then we will need to revisit the problem. But let's try the easy way first. I am every bit as interested in this being easy as it being safe, because I know I'll be doing a good deal of the deleting.
The reason I don't want to rely entirely on Speedy followed by REFUND, is that people other than the original author may be interested in fixing an article. With prod, they have a chance to learn about it.
Of all the people discussing this, how many are working on the actual parts of the backlog we can already uncontroversially work on? There are several thousand articles tagged for G11, and I'm going through them. If you want the junk deleted, put some work into it, and nominate them. I assure you they won't be there at CSD for very long. DGG ( talk ) 03:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Using a PROD method is pointless, as if it doesn't overload the system, the backlog will increase, not decrease. What's the point of waiting another 7 days when something hasn't been touched for 6 months or a year? All it is, is yet more pointless red tape which we should avoid. Also, why should an admin have to waste time diligently checking through a long-abandoned draft, when they could be doing much more constructive things? The CSD proposal is far more efficient. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 07:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Still this discussion? DGG, you went wrong at "Put in 50 articles a day"; put in 50 articles a day and the backlog of stale drafts will only grow, not shrink. Put in 100 articles a day and you may keep it barely as it is, put in 200 articles a day and you will tackle it. Very few people seem to be enthusiastic about the idea of increasing ProD with 200 pages a day. Fram (talk) 08:41, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Should G13 apply to articles that have mainspace promise?

This whole discussion defeats the purpose of defining speedy deletion criteria. Steel1943 (talk) 21:26, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

AfC rejects articles that may be suitable for mainspace: the criteria for being accepted at AfC are more strict than the speedy deletion criteria for articles. Do we want to move some of those articles to main, rather than deleting them? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:41, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, delete every draft older than a year

  1. support This process is never going to work if every article has to be reviewed manually. If someone does look at an article and sees promise in it, it's up to them to start editing it (which will protect it from deletion). Mangoe (talk) 16:32, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support - Mangoe hit it right on the head there. All this detritus that people are trying to add on is going to kill actually having a workable process. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 18:21, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support not that I object to people moving these things into mainspace, but I do object to making people examine submissions one by one for potential viability before deleting them. If we have to put in that kind of work then, as noted above, the process won't be workable. Hut 8.5 18:32, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Mangoe said it. Personally, I doubt that there will be all that much that's savable without a complete rewrite (jack up the radiator cap and fit a new car underneath it...). The stuff we're talking about isn't near miss FA material. It's mainly crap, waffle, promo, copyvio (often promo anyway), and so on. Those of us in the deletion business will know rescuers if we see anything worth rescuing. Anyway, DOES AfC apply tougher standards than CSD? If they're rejecting articles that could stand in main space, there's something seriously wrong, and it needs looking into. Peridon (talk) 18:55, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Comment How does an admin deleting this with no further check differ from a bot deleting these articles? I trust any editor to have better judgement than a bot, but I trust a bot to be able to check faster and more efficiently if the article is rejected, and if the last edit is more than a year ago. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 19:09, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support per Mangoe. Anyone who thinks an article can be salvaged is welcome to do that, and just as with PROD an admin reviewing a G13 can decide not to delete, but we should not require a review process. JohnCD (talk) 19:14, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If an article is at least B quality it should be moved to mainspace, rather than deleted

If an article is at least C quality, and it is not promotional, it should be moved to mainspace rather than deleted

  1. Support. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:39, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If an article is at least C quality it should be moved to mainspace, rather than deleted

If an article does not meet the A criteria for speedy deletion, nor any non-13 G criteria for speedy deletion it should be moved into mainspace rather than deleted

If an article shows promise it might in the future meet the speedy deletion criteria for article space, it should be moved rather than deleted

Should/does A7 "web content" apply to software applications?

I recently CSD'd Hidden-capture with {{db-web}}. Its content—written by Medtemp (talk · contribs))—when I added that template was

Hidden Capture (HC)

an application that captures from desktop or another area secretly if an user uses your computer without your permission. this application is designed and programmed by an iranian muslim developer he is nobody except mohsen e.davatgar. www: Hidden-Capture.blogfa.com

programmer: Mohsen-E-Davatgar.blogfa.com

29611670.x (talk · contribs) challenged that nomination, on the grounds that a7 doesn't apply to software. Xe went on to remove the blatant advertising from the page (as per policy on a potentially salvageable promotional article), so that it simply read

Hidden Capture (HC) is an application that automatically takes captures of a computer's desktop or active window.

Subsequently, Tentinator (talk · contribs) re-CSD'd, though I suspect he may not have known about 296's previous challenge. I definitely see the merit in 296's points, since while it's software, it's not web-based software. However, part of me still feels an article like this should be eligible under A7. What do others think? — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 10:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think it could be included, although people have raised objections before about it being hard to judge whether a piece of software is "important". Possibly if the "assertion of importance" criterion were made a little more clear this could solve the problem—it can be hard (at least for me) to tell whether or not an article "asserts importance" of its subject, minus an obvious "this was the first _ to _" or "this is the most popular _ in _ area". – 29611670.x (talk) 10:46, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it should be included, as it doesn't seem to be what it was intended for: personal homepages and the such. Currently neither the practise nor the letter of the criterion reflects that. The criterium doesn't seem to have kept up with the development of webpages to webapplications. Though I would disagree with a new criterium for non-notable software products, there may be consensus for it. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:50, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is no way this article is important or significant let alone notable. Delete on any grounds necessary. Leave it with me.--Launchballer 14:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It now reads

Hidden Capture (HC) is an application that automatically takes captures of a computer's desktop or active window; essentially, it records everything that happens on that machine, so the user can see if another user has been using it without the user's consent. It was developed by Mohsen E. Davatgar.

. I'm warning you; I'm using a school machine at the moment, so not only am I adding refs blind, I have no idea what they even say because they've been blocked. Could someone else format the links?--Launchballer 15:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment So far as I am aware, A7 does not apply to software that is downloaded for use at home or office (or wherever you are...). If it is only usable online - that is, it is actually running at THEIR end - yes, it is liable to A7. This means that the Great Aardvark Browser is not an A7 candidate, but greataardvarkbrowser.tk (where you download it for the low price of $73.67) is liable. A game for use at home is not liable, but a planetwide multiuser (so far, one user in New York, one in Little Snodbury on the Frizzle, and one in Macao - but it's up and coming!) is liable. I'm open to correction by those who have been mopping for longer than I have, but that's what I operate A7 web as meaning. Peridon (talk) 10:47, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As to the present case, I think 29611670.x was correct that A7 did not apply, but I have grave doubts about the notability of the thing - but that has to be prod and/or AfD. There is a vast amount of non-notable software about - but assessing the significance isn't as easy as it is, say, for an author of a self-published book (available from next month at the author's website). Peridon (talk) 10:54, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Which is clearly stupid - and I have been thinking so for quite some time. A solution would be to exclude web-applications from this criterium. Another solution could be to create a criterium for non-notable software. A third criterium could be that it is not broken/stupid enough to bother us, and maintain the status-quo. My preference would be the first, but seeing the lack of traction this thread is generating, I think it will come out as the third. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:29, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am a bit nonplussed by the fact that web applications are speediable but desktop applications are not, especially if A7 was meant to cover personal websites. Could I ask why you wouldn't be in favor of a criterium that would cover software? Is it because of the ambiguity surrounding what software is "important"? – 29611670.x (talk) 16:46, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed - pretty much the same as with other products, no indication of importance the way it is generally interpreted on CSD is hard to do for software, be it web or desktop (or mobile). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:57, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) There seems to be another similar thing in A7 - you can A7 a company, but not a product, or an author but not a book. Actual web-based progs aren't nearly as common as local based ones, but it's not those that the web bit is primarily there for. I see it as being to deal with the YouTube etc video perpetrators, the bloggers known to all of their friends (about seven if they've made it up with Charlotte again), and the rivals (launched three days ago) to eBay, that could hardly be described as companies (Wayne and Shaun working from Shaun's bedroom until they get the office open - in the garage). Never forget that CSD isn't designed to cover everything. It's a time and space saver to reduce loads at prod and AfD, and to deal with only obvious things. OK, there are problems. How blatant does a hoax have to be? "Shaun is awesome" is blatant (he's obviously insecure and pathetic, and an A7 candidate to boot...), but a case like Tillery illustrates my point. (Non-admins can work out what the article said from the AfD.) This is getting off the track. CSD is deliberately limited. The alternative is giving powers of life and death over all content to the admins. Most of us wouldn't misuse it. I hope... But...... Peridon (talk) 17:02, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tillery is actually on view - it seems to have been recently dug up and pickled as a specimen hoax for study purposes. Peridon (talk) 17:09, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Makes sense. I suppose it really isn't that big an issue to have to wait a week or so to see an article deleted—if people decide it truly should be deleted. – 29611670.x (talk) 20:16, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think instead of jamming more categories into what A7 applies to we should just say what it doesn't apply to, and we all know what that is: inherently notable things. We can deny that inherent notability exists, but it wouldn't be productive, because we all know that our practice is to give certain things a pass on demonstrating notability, which is why A7 doesn't apply to everything. Gigs (talk) 16:02, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

the problem is that for the computer software cited above, as for products in general, and certainly for books, there is no way of determining if it has even minimal importance without looking for reviews; it is very common for people to write such naïve article about actually notable products without knowing they are needed. Obviously if nothing can be found the article will be deleted, but if they are it's an opportunity to get an article. The exception for recordings is that the amount of publicity is so great that if the group does not have an article the chances of a recording being notable is essentially zero. This is not really true in other fields of activity. Although the extremely large number of web apps produced do make it very unlikely that one will be notable, I do not myself think they fall within A7; some admins do, and they are likely enough to be right that I don't argue with them. DGG ( talk ) 02:25, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Orphaned non-free revisions

I do very little file related deletion so I wanted to pass this by some of you who do. Isn't {{Orphaned non-free revisions}} geared toward and referring to the wrong criteria in it's documentation? It seems F1 is a perfect fit: "Unused duplicates or lower-quality/resolution copies of another Wikipedia file having the same file format." F1 has no waiting period. Yet, the template states a a seven day wait period, and its documentation says it calls to "F5/F7" and that files tagged with it "can be deleted ... after being tagged for 7 days." What's the deal?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:03, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why do we need sources for {{PD-textlogo}} ? They're not protected, so why are they showing up at Category:All Wikipedia files with unknown source tagged for deletion (F4: {{di-no source}}) because they're missing sources? -- 70.24.250.103 (talk) 05:35, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We don't. Tell whoever tags them as such that they're wrong. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:47, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, Sfan keeps doing this to {{pd-text}}, {{pd-shape}}, {{pd-chem}}, and {{pd-textlogo}} files. I've talked with him before. Quite frankly, I'd suggest filing an ANI report, because it's ridiculous how he doesn't check any of this stuff. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 05:54, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please be nice to Sfan. He does an incredible amount of work keeping file space clean. As an aside, I personally think a source should be required for these logos, even if it is just a link to the company's website, etc, in order to show that the logo isn't bogus. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:11, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
After I'd noted some reversions, I'm using the approach that the source is likely to be the organisation it's logo for.Sfan00 IMG (talk) 09:52, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What about File:Psi (large).png ? It's a greek letter, he just nominated it for deletion a couple of hours ago (the day after the textlogo deletion nominations) Or this simple file File:Vector a icon.svg ? -- 70.24.250.103 (talk) 16:07, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed the tags. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:51, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've put an unequivocal message on Sfan's talk page to stop deletion tagging categorically public domain images without superfluous source info. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 00:11, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is ridiculous. The only reason why we need a source is to prove that the work is freely licensed, but if an image is below the threshold of originality, then it is free regardless of whether it has a source or not. Without a source, it is impossible to tell whether the logo is the correct logo, but that is a completely different problem (violation of WP:V) which is better taken at WP:FFD if there is reason to believe that the logo is fake. --Stefan2 (talk) 10:58, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear I don't disagree that it is a problem, particularly for things like pd-simple. However, while I think the spirit of the rules is fairly obvious and in line with what you are saying, Sfan makes a good point at his talk page: the actual written documentation (Category:Wikipedia files with unknown source, {{di-no source}}) does not make it clear that PD files do not require a source. Also consider the intro to our guideline WP:PD: "Proper attribution to the author or source of a work, even if it is in the public domain, is still required to avoid plagiarism." — This, that and the other (talk) 12:18, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Which is wrong - public domain works don't require attribution. Our requirements for a source are only so we can verify it is actually public domain, but this is not necessary for things like {{PD-ineligible}} so we need to change that documentation. Thryduulf (talk) 13:22, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
{{PD-textlogo}} doesn't require a source. {{PD-1923}} requires a source so that you can tell that it indeed is {{PD-1923}}. How can you know that a work was indeed published before 1923, if there is no source indicating when or where the work was published? --Stefan2 (talk) 21:56, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Except there's no reason to believe the source would tell you that, either. Public domain stuff just ends up wherever. I'm wondering if {{information}} should be updated with a pd-justification parameter for these sorts of situations. Making category:Wikipedia files with unknown source conditional on both source and pd-justification would help keep overzealous editors from tagging public domain articles for deletion without sourcing, and a category:PD-ineligible files with unknown source would be easily reviewable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vanisaac (talk • contribs) 2013-04-20T22:19:01
I think that we should be careful not to add any fields which don't exist on Commons as the contents of those extra fields might be deleted when files are moved to Commons. Things like this may be better for the "permission" field. For example "Source = A book from 2005 [insert the title of the book here] | Permission = Published in this or that newspaper on 1 January 1905". --Stefan2 (talk) 22:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think a more pressing issue is to somehow "codify" these views into our policies and guidelines. At the moment, our projectspace resources (those mentioned above, as well as this) do not agree with each other and are quite unclear. Which PD files need a source? Which do not? What level of detail is needed where a source is given? How can this be communicated to uploaders and filespace maintainers? — This, that and the other (talk) 07:45, 21 April 2013 (UTC) [reply]

Files which are inherently PD due to ineligibility need no proof at all. Files which are PD due to age need a source or otherwise some kind of proof of publication/creation date. Files which are PD as a government work need a source or otherwise some kind of proof that they are really government work. Files which are released into PD by author need to be own work or require an OTRS release. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:29, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've added a note to the documentation of {{di-no source}} and {{Nsd}} that they are not applicable to files categorically ineligible for copyright. We'll see if this keeps happening. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 02:43, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Good addition. Images correctly tagged as PD-ineligible, PD-textlogo, etc. should never be deleted on copyright grounds. Nyttend (talk) 20:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A7 wording

"It is irrelevant whether the claim of notability within the article is not sufficient for the notability guidelines. If the claim is credible, the A7 tag can not be applied. Often what seems non-notable to a new page patroller is shown to be notable in a deletion discussion."

What's the point of this paragraph? I've often declined A7 tags on articles that don't discuss importance but do appear to demonstrate notability — in other words, they seem to be about unimportant people/companies/etc. that still deserve encyclopedia articles. Is this paragraph telling me that I should delete such pages instead of declining the speedy? Nyttend (talk) 20:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That paragraph is saying that if an article asserts the importance of the subject, it doesn't matter if the subject meets the notability guidelines or not (i.e. importance is a lower standard than notability). If you find a page that doesn't assert importance but does appear to meet the notability guidelines then you are correct to decline the speedy deletion as we want articles about such subjects. In other words a new page needs to assert importance or be notable, it doesn't necessarily have to do both. Thryduulf (talk) 09:27, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
An important bit is 'credible'. The fourteen year old multi-millionaire who is engaged to Emma Watson is definitely not credible (without excellent evidence...). A7 deals at the lower level of 'significance', rather than 'notability'. What passes A7 often fails prod or AfD. Basically, if there is no claim to significance ("Shaun Weinburg is a student in the third year at Bloggsville County College"), A7 applies. But if Shaun Weinburg is claimed to be the first ten year old to attend Harvard, there is a claim to significance if it's true. (If it isn't, then it's a hoax...) If it's true, it can be taken to AfD if thought not to be notable. Like the whole of CSD, it's a shortcut that takes the pressure off prod and AfD by removing the obvious fails. If they take knowledge you haven't got (like me in the case of American football), leave them. Someone else will know. If no-one knows, AfD is the answer. Only a moment's thought and a quick dive into Google should ne needed at CSD. Peridon (talk) 10:26, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

F6/F5 deletion and files already under discussion at PUF/FFD

Shouldn't F6/F5 deletion be suspended until a file has cleared PUF or FFD? Afterall, those discussions may indicate why the file is insufficiently templated or not in use at the moment (such as being removed prior to deletion nomination, or recent conversion to fairuse from free-use); especially in the case of conversion from free-use to fair-use, the maintenance of the fair-use rationale templating may fall behind, depending on who switch the license template and whether they forgot to add the FUR or not. -- 70.24.250.103 (talk) 03:49, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of course. Being subject to a deletion discussion automatically makes an image ineligible for deletion until the discussion is closed. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:53, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ Past discussions leading to schools being exempt from A7.
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