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New draft CSD

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
These proposals are unsuccessful. None of these proposals have received the high level of consensus expected of a policy proposal. Mz7 (talk) 19:09, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Renumber G13 to D1 and create the following new Draft CSD:

D2: Any draft that would be subject to speedy deletion as an article

Any draft that would fail any of the active criteria for speedy deletion of articles is valid under this criterion. When deleting or nominating a draft page under this criterion, remember to indicate which article CSD criterion applies to it. {{Db-d2|criterion}}

D3: Blatant misuse of Wikipedia as a web host

Pages in draftspace consisting of writings, information, discussions, and/or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals, where the owner has made few or no edits outside of draftspace, with the exception of plausible drafts. It applies regardless of the age of the page in question. {{Db-d3}}, {{Db-draftu5}}

Kamafa Delgato (Lojbanist)Styrofoam is not made from kittens. 16:02, 21 December 2018 (UTC) RFC was withdrawn but with this many responses I am reverting and keeping the RFC open Primefac (talk) 21:11, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

G13 → D1 survey

D2 survey

change to support, I see this as something that is too subjective. User-space is normally not messed with unless it is very bad. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 16:03, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm not basing my opinion on other reviewers. I'm a deletionist by nature and more often then not think we keep amazing amounts of garbage here we don't need. I've authored quite a few articles and work AFC myself but I don't see why we need this when this could easily use WP:IAR in egregious cases. No slight to Legacypac but I'm not seeing the need here. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 16:31, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
The most active managers of drafts support extending U5 to draft space There are thousands of AFC Drafts plus unsubmitted junk we could clear out without REFUND or MfD. Legacypac (talk) 19:35, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Serious proposals to apply A* criteria to drafts almost always paired them with a timeout, either since the draft was created or since it was last edited. Now that G13 applies to everything in the draft namespace instead of just the AFC ones, this is dead in the water. —Cryptic 19:18, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. There needs to be a space outside of userspace where articles that are at risk for deletion in mainspace can be developed further.Vexations (talk) 19:24, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Some of us volunteer here because we believe that building Wikipedia is a service to humanity. Some of us are against allowing Wikipedia to be a tool to spread spam and misinformation. Other editors oppose every effort to make cleaning up junk easier perhaps because they love misinformation and the abuse of Wikipedia. Legacypac (talk) 19:59, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm sure most of us believe in building Wikipedia to benefit all people but I'm still not seeing how other sites mirroring such content figures into that. Regards SoWhy 14:52, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
  • How do you propose to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Please explain how this will be possible given the criteria as proposed makes no exceptions. Thryduulf (talk) 19:56, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose although I think we are more or less already at this point or past it and that draftspace would be better off abandoned, see WP:Don't use draftspace. But it's worth opposing because plenty of people still do use draftspace, and many pages suggest doing so, although the description of it they give is highly misleading. This proposal would kick problematic draft deletions into overdrive and only make the problem worse. A2soup (talk) 19:55, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Per SoWhy. But additionally, I oppose the idea of an omnibus criterion like this for the draftspace. I think it is preferable to modify the existing "A" criteria to say that they apply to the draftspace than to create a new "D" criterion. --Bsherr (talk) 20:12, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support, but make it applicable only to drafts submitted to WP:AFC. If the topic is thoroughly non-notable, there's no point in retaining it and implicitly inviting the submitter to work on non-viable drafts. --K.e.coffman (talk) 21:06, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
  • General comment: I invite editors interested in draft space or new articles to get some first-hand experience with them. Being part of NPP / AfC gives one a different perspective. NPP is severely backlogged, at ~4000 articles: Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers. The AfC backlog is ~1300 drafts / 3 weeks: Category:AfC pending submissions by age/3 weeks ago. I would invite editors here to join either of these projects and help out with the backlogs. K.e.coffman (talk) 21:21, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose draft space should be a respite from rapid deletions such as no context, A7, G4, A11. Other criteria such as G11, G12, hoax, attack pages are commonly used on drafts already so there is no need for this as it would be to the detriment of partly written articles that may turn out fine after a pause, there is no time limit except 6 months and that should remain, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 22:24, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Why should A11 pages exist anywhere? CoolSkittle (talk) 15:42, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
A11 can be addressed through editing. For example A11 doesn't apply to articles which indicate that the subject is important or significant. That could be done by adding additional prose or references. Draft space is intended to be a safe space to allow article development like this without the "FIX IT NOW OR IT GETS DELETED!" attitude of mainspace. Hut 8.5 19:03, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - e.g. A10 should not apply to draftspace as it can be used to draft things that are better than or may appear to duplicate something that exists (but actually does not), while A7 and A9 should not apply because contributors should be given time to establish indications of importance. Even A3 should not apply as contributors should be given time to add content to drafts. Draftspace is for potentially encyclopedic works of progress of most kinds, while the mainspace is for encyclopedic content that meets minimum established standards; spaces which have purposes that are at odds should not share the same set of speedy deletion criteria. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 11:33, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose The draft space is a place to create articles which can subsequently be moved into the mainspace. More specifically, it's designed to allow a user time to create the article, source it an ensure that it would survive in the mainspace. This proposed CSD would defeat this purpose. A draft should only be deleted if either it has been abandoned for long enough that it will probably never be improved, or if it's so bad that it's blatantly obvious no article could possibly come from it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:53, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose this defeats the purpose of the Draft space. If we make the A Speedy deletion criterion applicable there it is no different than the mainspace. ~ GB fan 13:31, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose, but would support extending A2, A5 and A10 (duplicate articles) to draftspace, or even generally --Danski454 (talk) 12:54, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose – this undermines the purpose of draftspace, especially criteria such as A7 and G4. Bradv🍁 17:14, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support per Legacypac. PrussianOwl (talk) 00:23, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
    No amount of discussion, evidence or logic will ever convince SoWhy to support any change to policy or practice that makes deletion of junk even slightly easier. They have next to zero experience at MfD or in Draft space so I just dismiss their useless comments on how these areas work. You asked a "question" about throwing babies out. The question is too unclear to answer very easily but in general any criteria or process could be misused in any possible way so we don't avoid making life reasonably easy because someone might do something wrong or stupid some day. Legacypac (talk) 15:27, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
    I don't see SoWhy's comments as useless at all - rather the exact opposite. Unless and until you can objectively define "junk" in such a way that it doesn't allow the speedy deletion of content that should not be deleted (speedily or otherwise) then your ideas belong nowhere near the deletion process, regardless of how much easier it would make your life. There is a very good reason why the four requirements for new and expanded criteria at the top of this page are not optional. Thryduulf (talk) 15:56, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
Junk = pages that would he deleted at MfD, and a little more broadly, abandoned stuff not suitable for article space which generally would also be deleted at MfD if we did not have G13. Opinion about process based on no experience with the process is not helpful, it is noise. Legacypac (talk) 23:20, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
That's a definition, but it clearly fails requirements 1, 2 and 4 of the requirements for new criteria: It's not objective in the slightest, it's not uncontestable (much of what is deleted at MfD is not done unanimously and many nominations result in something other than deletion) and it's not non-redundant (G1, G2, G3, G10, G11, G12 and G13 exist). Given those failures I've not bothered to evaluate it regarding requirement 3. Thryduulf (talk) 11:00, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - This seems to be the idea of a few of the regulars at MFD who like to go through draft space and tag stupid drafts for deletion. We don't need to delete stupid drafts, just to let them time out. The Reject option for reviewers is now available to get rid of stupid drafts. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:12, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

D3 survey

Quick SNOW oppose. No stunning arguments have been made since the last discussion on this was closed 5 days ago with general opposition to the proposal. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:58, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

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

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.

Discussion

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.

Foreign language Drafts

Is there any speedy rationale that apples to Draft:Elisión de la /d/ intervocálica and similar before the 6-month abandonment period passes? UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:31, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

No. Also, why should there? Either it's abandoned, then G13 will take care of it or the user will still translate it, then it's useful to keep. Also, I think such drafts are so rare that there is no reason to suspect that MFD could not handle those few cases where deletion needs to happen before six months have passed. Regards SoWhy 14:41, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
I don't see any reason why we should speedily delete foreign language drafts just for being in a foreign language. A translator might decide to copy the text they're translating into a draft as a starting point. There's no reason to speedily delete such a thing unless they stop working on it. Hut 8.5 18:44, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks all for the thoughtful responses. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:20, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

G7

If an editor creates an article, and shortly afterwards nominates it for deletion, isn't that tantamount to a G7 request, even if said creation is pointy? Mjroots (talk) 16:12, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

For G7, the only question is whether the author requests deletion, not why the article was authored in the first place. That said, as with most speedy requests, an admin can decline the request if they think the article should exist. After all, once you created something, you have made it available under a CC-BY-SA license for everyone else to use. Regards SoWhy 16:19, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
In the case in question, the author created the article, then nominated it for deletion 7 minutes later. Nobody else edited the article apart from one editor (not the creator) who tagged it for G7 before I deleted it and closed the AfD discussion. Said article has been recreated by original author. Mjroots (talk) 16:27, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
That may or may not be the case. G7 and an AfD nomination generally mean different things: "Please delete this" vs. "I don't think this is notable. What does everybody else think?". – Uanfala (talk) 16:29, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
Or "Here's a poor nomination, so I can immunize this article from AFD" vs. "Here's a poor article, so I can show precedent that this subject gets deleted at AFD"? From Mjroots' mention of WP:POINT, I rather suspect this falls closer to one of my two alternatives than to one of yours. —Cryptic 16:45, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
What matters is whether the deletion request was made in good faith, not whether the article was. If the request was pointy, too, I'd decline. —Cryptic 16:45, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

OK, for clarity. The article in question is Sonasan railway station. It was created by Rhadow with this edit at 20:44 on 2 February. At 20:51, Rhadow nominated (not sure if non admins can see these) the article for deletion. It was tagged for G7 by Tyw7 at 10:58 on 3 February. I deleted the article and closed the AfD. Rhadow recreated the article at 12:24 on 3 February. There is currently a discussion at WT:TWP re the notability of railway stations. Some editors are under the illusion that an essay overrides a policy and content guideline. The creation of the article was pointy to say the least. Mjroots (talk) 17:00, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Mjroots, I tagged it as G7 as the way I see it, the creation [of the article and subsequent AFD nomination (original comment expanded ) --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 17:29, 3 February 2019 (UTC)] was a WP:POINTy one. And in my mind, if the author created the article and then AFDs it, it would be similar to a G7. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Tyw7&oldid=881576415#Notability and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Rhadow&oldid=881573450#Railway_stations where it's evident that its creation and nomination was to prove a WP:POINT. The author describes the article as "bait" --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 17:17, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
An opinion I totally agree with. Mjroots (talk) 17:19, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
Mjroots, this edit, which was sneakily removed (diff), kinda confirms the WP:POINT. Rhadow commented "it's bait" after I asked him why I should be cautious (diff)
And I think comments of this incident is too spread out and fragmented. Shall we combine the case here (or somewhere more appropriate)? --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 19:42, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello all, if you want to discuss me and my articles, you may do so in public, without using the noping feature. Yes, I have an RfC and an AfD in play on the topic of notability of railway stations. That's obvious. I have also been editing Indian railway station articles actively. You can check. What I have seen has been disturbing to me. References in batches that do not support article text. Full length original research articles without a reference in sight. When there is no remedy for an article -- no deletion, no redirect, essentially a free pass at AfD -- there isn't a hope that things will improve in this sector. Some have brought out the big stick, the threat of a block, to quiet the dissenting voice. That's tyranny of the majority and not a good sign. The experience of the reader (reliable articles) needs to take precedence over comity in the editor ranks. That's what this is all about, isn't it? Rhadow (talk) 20:29, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Rhadow, well a WP:POINT article creation is certainly not a way forward.

There are ways to argue for something without resorting to disruptive edits. --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 20:44, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

It seems the article was created for WP:POINT reasons, especially after the creator/AfD nom Rhadow admitted its creation and immediate AfD were "bait" as Rhadow was canvassing. (diff). While I admit I took the "bait," I don't mind this being deleted as long as the official reason is for either a WP:POINT article creation or G7, but the former is more accurate. Oakshade (talk) 20:35, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
@Rhadow: - I used noping because I wanted to give others the opportunity to comment without you muddying the waters, so to speak. I was unsure of your motives in creating the Sonasan railway station article, but I think I understand now. Part of the reason behind this post was that I was trying to determine what, if any, administrative action needed to be taken. Luckily for you, this was not a situation where immediate action was needed and I could take a bit of time to investigate. At this point in time, I am of the opinion that no action is required.
I'll discuss this further with Rhadow on his talk page, but I'd like a definite answer to the original question. "If an article's creator nominates an article for deletion, is it tantamount to a G7 request?" Mjroots (talk) 06:19, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
Mjroots, I take it your intent was to discuss me and my article in camera. What for you is "muddying the waters," I see as an affirmative defense. In the last twenty-four hours, I have been threatened with a block. That remedy is a strong message -- that the community is better off without an editor. To come to that conclusion without the participation of the accused is a medieval method.
As to the difference between WP:G7 and WP:AfD, I think Uanfala had it right: "Please delete this" vs. "I don't think this is notable. What does everybody else think?" My request was specific, to redirect the new work. That's not a WP:G7 action.
Frankly, I was expecting a New Page Patroller to flag the article for insufficient references or for them being connected to the subject. The article would then have been reverted to draft status. Only a new article gets those eyes, impartial eyes, I hope. Any existing article gets the response that Hapa Road railway station did.
In answer to your question on my talk page, yes, it is my belief that all railway stations are eligible for mention in Wikipedia. Those stations for which there is sufficient material to support an article should get an article, according to WP:GNG. Others get a redirect to the parent line or municipality with a mention. The WP reader should not go away empty-handed. Conversely, the reader should not be served a full article of original research. The speedy deletion forum is not the right place to discuss all this. It will come in time as a better-prepared RfC in the appropriate venue. In the mean time, you are free to see how the argument is shaping up in my sandbox. Please feel free to comment there at the bottom. There are also some minor ramblings at [[1]] Rhadow (talk) 09:46, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
Rhadow - No, it was not my intention to discuss this in camera - to me that means discussing an issue off-wiki, where there is no public record. This is not something that I do unless it is in exceptional circumstances. I can assure you that this is not an exceptional circumstance and I have not discussed the issue outside of Wikipedia. Mjroots (talk) 09:54, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
Mjroots - Great. No harm no foul. Did I answer your other question sufficiently? Rhadow (talk) 10:02, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
Rhadow, well in this case you, the author of the newly created article had requested AFD. So that would be similar to a G7. I and User:Mjroots would like clarification from others whether in this case, where the author of a newly created article requested AFD, G7 could be applied.
User:Uanfala's remark is not on the right track as, in this case, the creator of the AFD and the creator of the article is the same person.
It's pointless to create an article you yourself think is not notable as a "bait" (your words, not mine), to sway consensus. --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 10:57, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
As I was pinged several times, I guess I ought to reply: I took this discussion to be also about the general case, so my comment was trying to point out why an AfD nomination by an article creator does not necessarily equate to a G7 request. And if we're going to discuss only the specific incident that brought this about: well, yes, the AfD nomination was clearly pointy. But then, the nomination was arguing for redirecting, not deletion, so G7 should have been squarely out of the picture. And also, regardless of the intent of the nominator, there had already been one well-argued keep !vote, so a speedy close seems a bit difficult to justify. And on a more general note again, while it's often a good idea to stop editors acting in bad faith, sometimes if a discussion is started by someone trying to prove a point, it might be better to simply let it run its course and see the nominator's point defeated, as would have likely happened in this instance. – Uanfala (talk) 14:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

We see user and draft pages brought by the creator to MfD occasionally and they always get G7 deleted when tagged by some more experienced editor. Legacypac (talk) 19:49, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Expand R2 slightly?

When content is userfied out of the Book: namespace, that seems to be identical to content Userfied out of the Mainspace, and so any resulting Book-to-User cross namespace redirects should also be subject to speedy deletion under R2. Comments? UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:24, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Given the activity levels of the Book namespace, I would prefer not to change the definition of R2 for such an unfrequent occurrence. G6 "Deleting pages unambiguously created in error or in the incorrect namespace." can be stretched if necessary. —Kusma (t·c) 17:20, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
Speedy deletion criteria should never be stretched as that defeats the entire point of them. However if the content really was created in the wrong namespace then it would apply without being stretched. How often is content userfied from the book namespace? It it's frequent then yes expanding R2 would make sense, if it's rare then just send them to RfD. Thryduulf (talk) 04:14, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Modules

To my surprise, modules aren't mentioned anywhere at WP:CSD. I would have expected them to be covered by the T series, since other template-related processes, e.g. XFD, handle them like the templates that they power. Would it be appropriate to put a note at the top of that section, These criteria also apply to modules? T2 isn't particularly likely (why would you write a Lua page to write a disclaimer or something else of the sort?), but T3 is quite plausible. Nyttend (talk) 03:34, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to add modules to T2/T3 or in the Templates section. TFD did just add modules to its explicit scope as well. --Izno (talk) 03:50, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
WP:T3 requires the template to have been tagged for a week before deletion. How is that going to work with modules? You can't place a tag on a module, and if you put it in the documentation then any editors using (vs. reading) the module will not notice. In practice, I don't imagine there to be much of a need for module speedy deletions; most modules go along with a wrapper template, and if that template is speedied then the module should presumably be able to go per G8. – Uanfala (talk) 04:00, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
We routinely tag pages in their corresponding talk space when we can't tag the page directly (for whatever reason). --Izno (talk) 04:35, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
True but I think Uanfala is correct as well: Modules can be G8'd if all templates that relied on them were deleted which should be the most obvious usage. That said, I don't see the harm of making the change Nyttend proposes but with a slight modification to accommodate Uanfala's concerns, e.g. changing T3's description to read:
Templates that are substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template, may be deleted after being tagged for seven days. Modules that fit these requirements are also eligible if no template has made use of the module for seven days. If the module is no longer in use because the template that relied on it was (speedy) deleted, use G8 instead.
Regards SoWhy 10:55, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
Curious about this, as I'm planning on allowing Twinkle to tag modules: is it better to tag the doc or the talk page? The former will show when viewing the module, the latter will appear on module watchers' watchlists. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:53, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
  • But is there really a need to speedy delete modules? How many modules are there that will fit T3? And more generally, I'm not seeing a mass of TfD nominations for quick fail modules, and in fact you'd be lucky to see any module nominations at all. It's understandable why there should be speedy criteria for templates: templates are easy to create, accessible to almost any user and there are large classes of templates (think navboxes and the like) whose usefulness (or uselessness) can be quickly judged by any admin. Modules, on the other hand, have normally tended to be more complex, and so have generally required more work to create, and more tech saviness to evaluate. – Uanfala (talk) 19:30, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
I'm struggling to think of any reason to speedily delete a module that isn't one of the G criteria - and they already apply. T3 already has a 7-day waiting period so there is little to be gained over TfD in terms of speed and the volume is not going to cause any issues. Thryduulf (talk) 01:25, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
  • How many times do we need to speedy delete things in the Module: namespace? (Or the TimedText namespace)? If they aren't mentioned, maybe deletions there aren't common enough to necessitate speedy criteria? The Portal criteria (I think I have deleted one page under P2 in more than a decade of CSD patrol) should serve as a reminder that we shouldn't create criteria if deletions under it aren't common or urgent. —Kusma (t·c) 09:43, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
    Modules are basically fancier templates written in another programming language, so making a distinction between Template: and Module: namespaces makes no sense. That is, I think, the whole point of Nyttend's proposal. PS: According to my deletion analyzer script, you have never made a P2 deletion but three P1 deletions (out of 16k+ deletions). Which kinda proves your point. Regards SoWhy 10:25, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

G13 on sight?

To what an extent is it acceptable for an admin to be performing G13 deletions (particularly a large number of them) on sight, that is, without anyone having tagged them beforehand and without the creator getting notified? – Uanfala (talk) 11:47, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Creators should definitely be notified whether or not it is on sight, as they may not even be able to find their old drafts if they aren't notified.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:21, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
  • G13 is based on bright-line criteria (untouched for > 6 months - yes/no) unlike some of the other CSDs which require an opinion. As such a second-pair-of-eyes won't make any difference and on sight deletion seems fair enough. Notification, with the offer of WP:REFUND, are a basic courtesy... perhaps even a basic decency. Cabayi (talk) 12:33, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
  • The idea is to get at least two sets of eyes on a draft to see whether it's salvageable and should be deferred. (Besides which, anyone who watches WP:REFUND will be able to tell you how often creators can't figure out the names of their drafts even when they are notified.) —Cryptic 12:47, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
  • G13 deletions should be done only by bot. The bot gives the author a prior notification, and then the deletion notification that includes the instructions to get it WP:REFUNDed on request. Is the bot, once hasteurbot, taken over by someone else, not functioning? Ad hoc G13 deletions serve no useful purpose and increase the chance of bad G13s. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:02, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
    • (You're conflating taggings and deletions here. I know what you meant, but it's not helpful.)
      FWIW, it's been some time since I saw a G13 tag that was bot-applied. But then, the G13 category's mostly been tending to instantly empty by the time I finish reading through the first draft in it, so. —Cryptic 13:09, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
      • The bot is User:Bot0612. As far as I remember, its G13-tagging task didn't end up getting approved because there were minor issues that the bot operator, User:Firefly, didn't address as they had stopped editing by that time. This bot has another task for notifying creators, and that one seems to be working alright, but it only affects AfC submissions. Drafts that aren't done via AfC, as well as dratfified articles, don't seem to result in bot notifications, but the drafts get G13'ed anyway. – Uanfala (talk) 13:31, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Twinkle nominations and clicking the AFC script G13 nomination notify the creator just fine. Legacypac (talk) 23:11, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
  • I object to bot-deletions of G13 because, disdainful of draftspace junk as I am, a bot deletion would lead to indiscriminate deletion of even good drafts that happened to not be edited for six months. G13, although it almost invariably is treated as such, is not mandatory. PrussianOwl (talk) 21:15, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
  • As far as I know, it's up to an administrator whether they want to CSD tag an article for someone else to delete or to delete it when they come across an article that qualifies for deletion. Should G13 be different from this? Natureium (talk) 21:38, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
    • When I asked the question that started this thread, the focus was intended to be on the without notifying the creator bit, not so much on the without anyone else having tagged it beforehand. There's always an element of courtesy in notifying people if any of their stuff is about to get deleted, but if G13 is different from other speedy criteria, it's the fact that the creator of the page can remove the speedy tag. You know, a G13 deletion depends entirely on the creator doing, or not doing, anything about it: the only thing making a given page eligible for deletion is the presumption that its creator has abandoned it. There's no way to find out if this is indeed the case unless you nudge them; How is a newbie supposed to know that anything they don't touch in six months will disappear? – Uanfala (talk) 22:27, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
  • This should not be done. The notification issue is address above already. Another issue is that the page does not receive a tag. And then when it has a WP:REFUND it looks as if it has nt been edited for 6 months and then others delete or attempt to delete it again. In the history of the page, the log is not attached and others cannot see what happened to it with ease. I think there will be people willing to tag these pages for g13, we just don't need admins jumping in and deleting before there is a tag. So a page should be be tagged for g13 before deletion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:26, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
  • There is general policy against bot deletions, or automatic unthinking administrative actions of any sort. The idea that G13 is different because it is readily reversible is absurd--it is rare that the original editor is still around to see it ,and quite unlikely that anyone else ever will. But sometimes the editor will be here, or will have thought to be notified by email of edits to his talk page. Warnings serve as a backup in such cases. (my experience is that about 1/3 of the time, the editor does follow up, and in 2/3, lets it get deleted) The very idea of deletion without warning (except in the case of vandalism) is antithetical to the principles of an open project, and even more basically, repugnant to the general concept of fairness (which it seems even non-human primates have, and is sometimes thought to be the basis of morality in general.)
    • What we instead need to do, is to resume the practice of one-month warnings, and then notification, and then discourage anyone or two admins who may watch to remove them immediately without looking at them. We've been mindlessly deleting drafts by G13 on subjects notable in the de and fr WP -- which have higher notability standards than we do in almost all areas. We've been deleting G13 for articles on famous people that the single editor who looks does not recognize.--and in at least one or two admins, would think it right to delete regardless of possible usefulness to the extent they make a point of never looking We've been deleting by G13 sourced drafts on subjects that are always considered notable, such as named geographic places. For the last month, now that I am free from arb com, I have been doing what I originally asked to become an admin to do, which is " to search for pages need rescuing," systematically in the deletion log. In every 100 G13 deletions, I find about 5 worth rescuing; in 100 speedies, I find 1 or 2. I would probably find twice as many of each if I also checked sports or popular music, where I am too ignorant to judge. DGG ( talk ) 06:26, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
In fact, I only manage to get to it about half the time, so the true numbers per day must be about 20 – 30 G13s, and 5 - 10 speedies. DGG ( talk ) 06:43, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Echoing DGG's findings I find a topic or two that can simply be accepted to mainspace out of every hundred or so on Wikipedia:Database reports/Stale drafts. Someone should glace at the pages before sending for deletion. Legacypac (talk) 06:36, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

What is recent?

There are two criterion, A10 and R3, that only apply to recently created pages. I have always used a month or so as the cut off. If it is older than that I don't think it is recent. Any other thoughts on the definition of recently created? ~ GB fan 18:37, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

I think that is too strict: within the last year certainly seems to qualify as recent to me. UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:05, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
I think it's somewhat purposefully vague but that sounds about right to me, especially for R3. I try to be somewhat context-aware, though; I'd consider even longer to be recent in the context of an A10, probably even (somewhat) progressively more so as it appears more and more egregious and intentional. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:39, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Think about the purpose: To enable legal attribution, particularly for copies outside Wikipedia. After a month these copies very likely exist with a link back to the name that is being considered for speedy deletion. The copier made a good faith attempt to attribute, but then a nominator and delete come along and trample on the legal rights of the people that wrote the page (at the wrong name) by deleting the assistance to find where it moved to. This is even more serious with images as they get moved to commons as well as renamed and can be very hard to trace using search. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:21, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
I also consider periods longer than a month to be recent for this purpose; for A10 if it's clearly inferior and has no content worth merging and is useless for a redirect and does not appear to be an attempt at a draft or revision for an improved article. Most of these are people not seeing we already have an article, or writing on a vague topic already well covered; for R3 it depends on the degree of implausibility and not apparently a good faith effort we might want to make use of. For this purpose, I interpret "recent" to be the opposite of "well-established". It's there to make sure that anything that has actually been around for a while gets a discussion, to make surethe impression of duplication or uselessness isn't a misunderstanding. DGG ( talk ) 07:13, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
At RfD, at the Redirect project the "recent" R3 is always interpreted very conservatively - anything over about a month is definitely too old, with around 2-3 weeks being cited on some occasions (and not only by extremists). The issue is that there a great many redirects that don't mean anything if you aren't familiar with the subject area but which are but which those who are regard as (all-but) essential and a hugely significantly greater number of redirects that are not clear-cut in either direction. RfD is not overloaded and having a possibly implausible redirect around for a week or so is rarely going to harm anything (and many of the ones that would are caught by another speedy criterion anyway). Thryduulf (talk) 23:37, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Proposal: Expand A11 to the draftspace (A11 -> G15)

Wikipedia is not for things made up one day. Any page whom's subject is made up by the author is not notable at all, and as such, it should be deleted as hopeless, like we delete adverts, tests, vandalism, hoaxes, attacks and nonsense. Deleting drafts that are made up and have no credible claim of significance would reduce the AfC backlog (especially high at the moment) and discourage further recreation. I propose the new criteria be G15, since there is no D criteria. Thoughts? CoolSkittle (talk) 17:57, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Not a fan. (A) If it only applies to drafts, it should be among the D criteria. (B) Articles about neologisms that would probably be speedied under A11 in article space can be more tolerable in draft space. If G1/G2/G3/G10/G11 don't apply, maybe wait a while. (C) If we start speedily deleting AfC drafts for typical A criteria, draft space kind of loses its point. —Kusma (t·c) 18:43, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
Quick note on your first point: Proposals for a new D criteria a few weeks ago were unsuccessful (including moving G13 to D1). Not sure there is consensus for D criteria. CoolSkittle (talk) 19:56, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
The proposal D2 above was clearly a non-starter, and moving something that applies to draft and user space to D1 wasn't clearly a good idea either. I am not convinced the discussion shows a general consensus against D criteria. Compared to the completely useless P criteria, there could actually be some point in having them. —Kusma (t·c) 20:58, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
Do you have any examples of current drafts that would be eligible for this new criterion? Regards SoWhy 18:56, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
Not a current draft but I can recall Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Kingdom of Matthew City - ping TonyBallioni. I have to say I can't recall that when I used to review more AfC drafts that there were that many A11 candidates, but then again I mostly reviewed older submissions and A11 submissions would be rejected quickly before they made it that far. Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:31, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Support SoWhy has near zero experiance in Draftspace or MfD so of course has not seen these. I have seen plenty of examples. Most get shoehorned into Hoax or Spam but would be much better classified as "made up one day" I don't believe this change would result in may additional deletions but would much better classify the G11 and G3 applications into an easier to understand criteria. Legacypac (talk) 19:09, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
    Instead of commenting on my (perceived lack of) experience, could you maybe just present those examples for us to make up our own mind? Regards SoWhy 20:03, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
    It is not "perceived", it is an easily demonstrable lack of experience. 500 examples will never convince you to support anything that might expand a CSD so, why entertain the question? Legacypac (talk) 21:05, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
    @Legacypac: It is an ad hominem fallacy and is clearly commenting on contributor rather than content. Knock it off. --Izno (talk) 22:35, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
    Agreed. I've experienced quite a lot of it from the same editor in two recent disputes (one CSD related, on "the portals question", the other MfD-related, on an essay).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:51, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Combine with G3 per that MfD. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:44, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose The whole point of draft space is so that users have time to find reliable sources to prove that their article is about something that wasn't made up that day. Is there really that large of an issue that MFD or G13 can't handle? Iffy★Chat -- 19:58, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose A11 doesn't apply if you can assert that the subject is significant. That means an A11 candidate is not necessarily "hopeless", because the author could add claims of significance or additional sources. In mainspace that's a problem but draftspace is supposed to be a safe space to allow article improvement without the immediate threat of deletion. Hut 8.5 20:19, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm also opposed to combining A11 with G3. They are fundamentally different in that one relates to good faith contributions and one to bad faith contributions. We shouldn't ever label good faith contributions as vandalism. Hut 8.5 18:31, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Combine with G3. I agree with TonyBallioni. A11 is really just a lowering of the standard for G3. A11 and G3 should be combined, and thus would be applicable to drafts. --Bsherr (talk) 20:29, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Combine with G3 by wordsmithing G3 a little. I actually came back to the discussion because I had the same idea. A game/term/club/stupid idea someone made up last week is pretty much on par with a fake topic someone made up. An A11 is just a G3 where the writer told us they made the thing up. We even have "Note: This is not intended for hoaxes" bolded in A11 because the concepts are so close. We just need to add a little text about "obviously invented" to G3. I can't imagine why any Draft that fits A11 would be or become acceptable. Legacypac (talk) 21:02, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
No, either option is good. I believe inserting junk you WP:MADEUP in an encyclopedia is vandalism and everyone knows this who does it. Legacypac (talk) 07:41, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Combine with G3. I have definitely closed multiple MfDs within the past couple years that have been dumb things some kid made up, stats for fan-created seasons of America's First Top Drag Survivor, or flat-out hoaxes, but because they're in draftspace, we have to either MfD it or wait for G13 to kick in. Why? We're not a webhost for inane bullshit, and hosting unverifiable made-up garbage is not the point of draftspace. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:25, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Oppose combining with G3, currently neutral on expanding A11 to drafts unless someone actually shows that this is a real problem. With all due respect to Tony, G3 and A11 are not similar. G3 implies bad faith editing by the creating user with the sole intent to disrupt Wikipedia by deliberately adding content that purports to be correct but obviously is not. A11 on the other hand applies to things that actually exist but were madeup by the creator or someone they know. To quote the policy as currently written: "Unlike a hoax, subject to deletion as vandalism under CSD G3 as a bad faith attempt to deceive, CSD A11 is for topics that were or may have been actually created and are real, but have no notice or significance except among a small group of people, e.g. a newly invented drinking game or new word.". To put it another way: An article that reads "Floppersgust is a game John Doeson and his friend created on a snowy winter evening in 2019" is clearly not a hoax because the subject is real, just not significant. Adding these kinds of articles to G3 (without a real need to make such a change to begin with!) would just make G3 hopelessly confusing because it would then apply to madeup stuff and real stuff at the same time. Regards SoWhy 21:29, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose As Hut and Iffy mentioned, A11 candidates are not hopeless. It's needed in mainspace because general readers actively read mainspace articles. Draftspace is not critical; the only issues with A11-eligible drafts is that they fill AfC and MfD queues. Though I don't doubt that there are some number of drafts that would qualify under expanded A11, I don't see evidence that there are enough that it would significantly reduce AfC/MfD burden. Appable (talk | contribs) 21:32, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'm somewhat in agreement with SoWhy and Hut, and per usual don't see the dire need for expansion to draftspace, but my stronger opposition is regarding merging with G3. G3 is for pure vandalism. Okay, we've stretched that to encompass blatant hoaxes, which is fair because a hoax is really vandalistic when you get down to it, but incorporating A11 really just takes it too far astray from "pure vandalism." G3 is one of our most clear-cut criteria, and I don't think muddying it up helps at all. A11 works precisely because it's limited to mainspace, so I think keeping things clear (aka as is) is to our benefit. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:27, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Support expanding CSD#A11 to all namespaces. This includes userspace, which I support weakly but can not articulate a good reason not to. Do not merge with G3. A bad faith hoax is not the same thing as a kid’s inept exposition of their imaginary friends adventures. Different auto-messages and log records are needed. Possibly add a U5 style restriction, that the author has never made any real contributions. Personally, I’d prefer it if the reviewers would just quietly and simply blank these pages, but I get it that passing them over irks their sensibilities. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:39, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose combining with G3 per SoWhy. I'm flabbergasted by the support for merging A11 with G3. It seems to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Wikipedia's definition of madeup (as well as the difference between madeup and hoax); madeup is something that is real, but hasn't been noticed by anyone outside of a small group of people. One could call it a most extreme case of non-notability. A hoax, on the other hand, is pure, deliberate disinformation. It matters not whether or not the creator admits it. There's a reason A11 and G3 are separate criteria; madeup does not equal hoax. Madeup cases are usually the result of a complete misunderstanding of what Wikipedia is for. There's a big difference between that and vandalism. Those that are bad faith are G3 as well as A11. There really is no need to merge two completely different criteria together. That would just muddy the waters and even potentially drive away new contributors (they may think their edits are being seen as vandalism). Adam9007 (talk) 02:59, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment Draft:The Ashmole Wars has just been IAR speedied as WP:MADEUP. Not sure if this occurs often enough to justify expanding A11 to draftspace though. I just thought I'd point this out as it appears to be relevant to this discussion. Adam9007 (talk) 19:50, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose combining G3 and A11per SoWhy, Adam9007 and others. They are fundamentally very different criteria and lumping tangientially related things together makes everything more opaque to end users and more open to admins and taggers getting it wrong or abusing the criteria to speedy delete things that should not be speedily deleted. Lumping too much into one is what resulted in the problems we have with G6 which we're slowly unpicking. Thryduulf (talk) 01:12, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose expanding A11 into draftspace per Iffy and Hut8.5, this would be contrary to the purpose of draftspace as a place where articles can be written and developed without needing to immediately satisfy all the rules so as to allow time for sources to be found and added to the article. Thryduulf (talk) 01:15, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
    • A11-eligible topics are not plausibly considered draft articles. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:20, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
      • Incorrect. A draft of a notable topic may start out without making any credible claims of significance but have one or more added subsequently - e.g. it may contain a claim that does not seem credible at first but is once a source has been added in a subsequent edit, or the drafter may be writing a biography of a person who did not become notable until adulthood chronologically starting with their early life. These are examples of the correct use of draftspace to create articles about notable topics that would be speedily deleted under this proposal. The proposal would therefore harm the encyclopaedia without bringing any benefit - if the draft is not finished G13 will pick it up, if it's egregiously bad then one of the other G criteria will apply, the few remaining examples that really don't belong and need to be deleted sooner than 6 months should be nominated at MfD where the reason for the hurry can be explained. Thryduulf (talk) 04:08, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
        • That is a pedantic line to argue. All A11 articles might become FA quality with the next edit. Also, it is clear that we are not clear about the drafts needing deletion - these are fleshed out personal stories of blatantly non-notable things, like the child's imaginary adventure, or the school bathroom. The only fail to be G11-eligible die to a lack of promotion, as they are actually worse, lacking any purpose at all. Perhaps we need to say that page contains material that would never be suitable, not just that there is no material that is suitable. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:58, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Combine they are very closely related, and can best be considered together. There are a good number of drafts each day that would fall into this category, and there is no sense in not removing them asquickly aas posible. --they are likely being used to game WP as much as because of vanity. DGG ( talk ) 04:47, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Combine with G3. New Page Reviewers already have to consign 22 CSD criteria to memory, any merging or reducing their number would help alleviate the thankless task of NPP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose Since there is no rush to delete drafts (as opposed to articles) for being made up and note that A11 didn't even exist in the article space until 2013, that said I don't object to obvious ones being deleted to reduce the workload on MFD. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:29, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The rationales are different. G3 is bad-faith activity to spread misinformation. A11 is about (often promotionally) writing about something real but obviously non-notable. Much of draft-spaced material isn't "obviously" anything, and much of the point is to provide time to do the work to establishing something's notability. If we were to make drafts speedily deletable simply because they haven't established it for that topic, then we have no use for draftspace and should just eliminate it. (Personally, I think that's an okay idea, since half the point of userspace is also drafting.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:51, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support expanding A11: Things that are obviously made up and/or clearly invented by the author do not need time to incubate, that's not going to help them not be obviously made up and/or invented by the author. Things that are not obviously made up (based on a credible claim of significance) are already excluded from A11.
Oppose combining with G3: A11 is for improper good-faith contributions, G3 is for vandalism. Don't mix the two. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:26, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Talk pages of nonexistent articles that are written as articles and would be speedy deletable as articles

On occasion, I stumble upon newly created pages in the talk namespace (recently, for example, Talk:Antonios torbey) that look like attempts at creating articles when the corresponding article page is nonexistent, but do not use talk pages for discussion, and could be deleted under a specific criterion such as A7 if they were articles. It seems that G8 would apply (talk page of a nonexistent page); however, G8 seems too broad in this case as it does not address the content of the page. Interestingly, Twinkle gives the option to tag such a page for A7, but from what I understand, criteria for content namespaces do not necessarily apply to their corresponding discussion namespaces, and no other criterion clearly outlines what to do in these cases.

Thus, I ask, what should be done to avoid treating G8 as an umbrella term or misusing another criterion? Some ideas:

  1. Apply G8 using its broad definiton,
  2. Expand the article criteria to cover talk pages that would be eligible for speedy deletion as articles,
  3. Draftify and R2 the resulting redirect,
  4. Create a new criterion or sub-criterion of G8 along the lines of:
New article-like page created on a talk page that makes neither a credible claim of significance nor an attempt at discussion to promote the article to mainspace. This criterion would not apply if:
  • The content clearly outlines a proposal to create an article (e.g. rationale, possible sources)
  • There is a signature by the user or another indication that it is an attempt at communication.
  • The page could be made into an article that would not be eligible for speedy deletion (for users who only created the page in the wrong namespace).

Thoughts? ComplexRational (talk) 18:14, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

  • Does this happen often? MfD would always be an option. One could move the page to Draft or Article space depending on how it looks, deleting the redirect if needed. It seems like a weird gray area that a one size fits all solution does not apply. The example could be tagged as G3 which fits all spaces. Legacypac (talk) 19:09, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
I delete such pages under WP:CSD#G8 criteria. Similarly, sometimes I will see other misplaced (template space, etc.) attempts to start an article with content that would be speediable in article space and I will deleted them with an edit summary such as "misplaced CSD#G11 candidate". No one has ever objected and I can't image anyone so rules-bound that they would. -- Ed (Edgar181) 19:25, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
Agree, G8 already takes care of those. I'm with Ed about other such pages as well: If a page was created in another namespace that is clearly meant to be an article (such as in Wikipedia-space), A-criteria apply to it as well because one could just move it to article space, delete it under an A-criterion and delete the redirect per G8. Of course, if the page is not clearly not ready or if there is possibly something to salvage, moving it to Draft is usually the better idea (similarly, misplaced user pages should just be moved to user-space). Regards SoWhy 20:07, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
I very, very strongly disagree that moving any page to a different namespace just so it can be speedily deleted can ever anything other than a gross abuse administrative privileges. If we wanted the A criteria to apply to anything outside the article namespace they would be G criteria (which is why A8 was replaced by G12) or there would be an equivalent criterion (e.g. A10, F1 and T3 all cover duplicates). If the page was intentionally created in the wrong namespace to deliberately circumvent a speedy deletion criterion (with the exception of creating pages in draft or userspace for testing or development) then G3 (vandalism) would apply. Thryduulf (talk) 10:33, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
I think you misunderstand my comment: If someone created Wikipedia:John Doemerman when they obviously were trying to create John Doemerman, then it would be completely correct to move the page to the right namespace, wouldn't it? And if after moving, someone nominated John Doemerman for deletion, it could be deleted via AFD, couldn't it? If so, then logically A-criteria also apply. There is no abuse in such cases, merely combining multiple allowed steps into one. Of course, if the page was not created somewhere else by mistake, then you would be correct. Regards SoWhy 09:24, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
We shouldn't be moving talk page "articles" to mainspace if they're created there to circumvent WP:ACPERM. They should be draftified if created in good faith, otherwise use whichever G criteria applies best (only using G8 if there's no better option). Iffy★Chat -- 20:20, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Regardless of why it was created in the wrong space you should always be moving pages obviously created in the wrong namespace to the correct location - if it's good enough to stand as a non-duplicate article already then move it to article space, if it isn't move it to draft space. If it would be a duplicate article then move it to article space then redirect it. In other situations MfD is the place to go. We should not be using G8 in this situation - it should either be moved to article or draft space or deleted using G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G10, G11, G12 or G14 if they apply; if none of them do and you still think it should be deleted then send it to MfD. Thryduulf (talk) 10:25, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
    • That's all very good as a general statement of principle, but a lot of the time it doesn't work in practice. If it's not in Draft:, User:, or mainspace, would be a speedy candidate in mainspace, and it wouldn't be a viable draft, there's no more reason to move it into draft than there would have been to draftify it if had been created in mainspace. To make this a bit more concrete, I've deleted 27 non-mainspace pages with summaries mentioning an A-series criterion but not G1 or G10-G14, listed at quarry:query/33689; and, while I haven't reviewed all of them today, of those that I did, the only ones I'm having any second thoughts whatsoever about speedying are the ones labeled A10. You'd seriously have draftified or mfd'd Template:Lillye (band) or WT:AB or WP:Kaifgames inc? —Cryptic 11:24, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
      • Yes. I'd have draftified the first and last of those three, and either draftified or MfD'ed WT:AB. Chances are they would sit there until deleted under G13 without harming anybody or anything, but there is small chance they'd have been improved. If a page does not meet the letter and spirit of a CSD criterion then it is not speedy deletable, no matter how bad it is or anything else. If you think these should be speedy deletable then get consensus for a new criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 11:38, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose any wording changes. G8 permits the deletion of talk pages that don't have corresponding non-talk pages, so your suggestion #1 is appropriate. The only time G8 isn't appropriate is if the content's actually good, in which case the page can simply be moved to a different namespace, and then the redirect can be deleted as housekeeping. Also, note that many such pages are tests, which are already G2-deletable. Nyttend (talk) 03:28, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Proposal for new temporary criterion X3

A proposal to create a new temporary criterion X3, for Portal-related speedy deletions, has been opened at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Proposal 4: Provide for CSD criterion X3. PLease contribute to the discussion over there. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:23, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Template editor or Admin request

Hi. Can a TE tag (or an admin delete) Template:Editnotices/Group/List of countries by Yazidi population and Template:Editnotices/Page/List of countries by Yazidi population for speedy deletion under WP:G6? I can't because its on the title blacklist. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 01:29, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

 Done. Primefac (talk) 01:31, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

R3 and recent

At Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 March 4#Catgegory:Molloy College alumni the definition of "recent" has been mentioned. While there probably doesn't need to be a strict limit, it would be worth adding a footnote to a general time. Per the comments at the RFD maybe "generally less than 1 month old" and noting that generally a shorter time can be given for redirects that were just created as redirects than redirects created from page moves. @Thryduulf and Tavix: Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:55, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Per the criterion "This criterion does not apply to redirects created as a result of a page move, unless the moved page was also recently created." (emphasis in the original) and in the context of page moves "recently" needs to be understood far more strictly than for redirects created as redirects as articles are more likely to gain incoming links from outside en.wp than redirects are. Something like "Generally less than about a month old" for redirects created as redirects, and something like "In most cases, around 2 weeks old or newer" for those created from page moves would get my support though. Thryduulf (talk) 14:09, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
  • This was just discussed at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#What is recent?. I think 3-6 months sounds right to me, personally. -- Tavix (talk) 14:11, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
    • I would be fine with Thryduulf's reccomendations, obviously common sense should be a factor to, a clearly implausible redirect that's 2 months old might stand a better change of being deleted under R3 than a less implausible redirect created 2 hours ago. Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:14, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
    • I would also be fine with Tavix's suggestion of 3-6 months. Anything longer than 6 months does almost always not qualify. Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:18, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
      • Common sense is precisely why there isn't a firm number, and why I would be wary to define one now because it would take away some discretion on the edge cases. -- Tavix (talk) 14:19, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
        • That RFD does indicate the problem with not specifying though. In that case I was tempted to (and wasn't far of doing so) tag it with R3. If Thryduulf thinks its 1-4 weeks and I thought anything up to around a year, that's quite a difference. IMO a vague pointer to not more than 3-6 months may be beneficial (again just as a footnote rather than in text). Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:30, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
          • I am absolutely not fine with 3-6 months as that's way too long in all but extreme edge cases (if something has been around that long it needs to be evaluated to see if it has links and/or uses - not something that is suitable for speedy deletion). A hard number is not appropriate, I agree, which is why I phrased my suggestions using "generally" and "about". Thryduulf (talk) 14:35, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

The RfD concerns a redirect one year old, which basically everyone agrees doesn't qualify as R3. I made my thoughts known in the recent discussion, but as has been said there and here, a level of discretion is valuable. More to the point, if you think there's a chance something might not qualify or there may be some concerns, it's probably better to go the XfD route rather than speedy. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:34, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Absolutely, if you have any doubt that something meets a speedy deletion criterion then it doesn't - and this applies to every criteria. The goal here is not to remove discretion, but to give guidance (not strict rules) for what "recent" means in context. Thryduulf (talk) 16:47, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposal: Expand G13 to outline drafts

This was resolved by the original proposers already Legacypac (talk) 17:26, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

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

Should CSD G13 be expanded to include subpages of WP:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts? — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 17:17, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Support as proposer. These draft outlines have by and large not been updated in a few years. The only thing keeping them alive is that they were not created in the proper namespace. Were they in draftspace, they would have pretty much all been deleted. Wikipedia is not a web host. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 17:17, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support there are around 700 according to some info I found. Most are mindless mass fill in the blank mass creations while others are a sea of redlinks. Every one of these Drafts duplicates an existing title in mainspace. No change to Twinkle is required, all the Gx CSDs work in Wikipedia space. Legacypac (talk) 17:24, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose expanding G13 just for this narrow one-off issue. The solution is to move these pages to the Draftspace and then apply g13 as usual (IMHO a pagemove does not "reset the clock" on the 6-mo waiting period). Would not oppose expansion of G13 to cover all drafts housed in any WikiProject, however. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:07, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
Since the problem is smaller than I understood it to be I now think this group of interested users can move and G13 or MfD as applicable. Faster than trying to get consensus for an expanded CSD. Legacypac (talk) 21:46, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I also agree that a WikiProject's drafts shouldn't be treated like userspace. They should be moved to draftspace and / or deleted if they dead. Support both this and UnitedStatesian's extended proposal. --Gonnym (talk) 18:11, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support expanding G13 to include all drafts in Wikipedia space. I also agree that fixing the namespace does not reset the clock on G13. Draft space and G13 were created to get drafts out of the AFC Wikiproject space so this is just tweaking the wording to match the original intent. Legacypac (talk) 18:17, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. We should not be expanding any CSD criteria for such a small reason (note the frequency requirement for new criteria applies equally to modifications). IF they are actually causing problems then they can be dealt with at MfD. Thryduulf (talk) 20:35, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - seems to be covered in the X3 proposal above. If that passes then this is unnecessary, and if not then there is also no consensus for this back-door. Also, perennial oppose to expanding G13. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:51, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
Says the guy who opposed the existance of these same pages several years ago because they would become mainspace pages. Legacypac (talk) 02:55, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
I don’t remember exactly what you are talking about. I oppose portals in mainspace, but they never were. I oppose creative content forking, but I encouraged auto-creation of Portals that would auto-update with editing of articles, eg Portals transcending ledes from articles depending on their position in category trees. I haven’t been following the activity, but it sounds like TTH has gone too big too fast. This reaction however is an over reaction. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:25, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
Too different stupid projects SmokeyJoe. This is about hos Outlines of Everything project. Today I found a discussion where you did not want these outlines in mainspace ever. It was an interesting read. You argued they duplicated portals and that they were content forks. I agree with you. He later abandoned Outlines and moved to Portals, with the same rational and agendas. The two projects are like siblings. Legacypac (talk) 03:37, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
I have a fair memory of this. Yes, outlines in mainspace were content forking. Yes, outlines and portals were and are two manifestations of the same thing, attempts at readable summaries of broad areas mainly for navigation purposes. I advised TTH to merge the two concepts, to abandon mainspace outlines, and to look to real time auto-generation of portal contents to avoid the problem of content forking. New portals, continuing portals, all portals except for the very few actually active portals, should contain no creative editing. They should be created by coding. TTH has followed my advice, so I should be pleased, and can hardly be quick to support deletion. However, he has failed WP:MEATBOT. He should have demonstrated working prototypes, maybe ten working auto-portals that update themselves based on changing article content. He should not have created thousands of new portals. The rancour generated is understandable, and completely to have been expected. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:12, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Modified Proposal: Add Wikipedia Namespace Drafts to G13

Per the previous discussion we should add point "4. Article drafts in Wikipedia namespace" to cover misplaced drafts or drafts hosted under wikiprojects. Draft namespace was designed to host Wikiproject drafts for collabertive editing and was initially populated with drafts from a wikiproject. The same reasons for G13 apply to other versions of draftspace under a wikiproject now. Legacypac (talk) 20:47, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Oppose - if an article draft is misplaced in the Wikipedia namespace, or other namespaces, the accepted treatment is to move it to Draft: space. Then G13 applies as normal. This extra proposal is unnecessary. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:51, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
Misplaced drafts can easily be moved to Main or Draft space for further use as appropriate. Multiple pages such as the one mentioned above can be handled by a one-time consensus at MFD. I don't see a real need to expand the scope of G13. Regards SoWhy 20:53, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose for lack of need per SoWhy and Ivanvector. This also does not address most of the reasons for opposition to the original proposal and actually might make some worse. Thryduulf (talk) 01:48, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per New Criteria criterion #3, no frequent need. Also, I can very easily imagine this broad scope criterion being misused to delete things that should not be deleted. Legacypac is wrong to state "Draft namespace was designed to host Wikiproject drafts for collabertive editing and was initially populated with drafts from a wikiproject". That was true ONLY for one specific WikiProject, being WP:AfC, which was inviting hoards of newcomers to create WikiProject subpages. These newcomers were not WikiProject members. This is a big distinction. Pages properly organised in WikiProjects, by their WikiProject members, should not be subject to unwanted cleanup by deletion by non-members. WP:PERFORMANCE issues excepted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:22, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

New F Crtiera - Unused/unusable explicit image.

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a porn host. Therefore I am asking if there should be a CSD that allows users and admins to 'speedy' delete explicit image that are unused, or which cannot be used within the context of encyclopaedia. This would in effect make the NOPENIS policy used on Commons a grounds for speedy deletion of the same kind of media on English Wikipedia.

The amount of existing media that would be affected is hoped to be tiny. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:51, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

It'll need some refinement on what is considered unusable and for why, but it's a sensible proposal. Nick (talk) 16:58, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
Unusable explicit images (or those uploaded and then used for shock value) are covered by WP:CSD#G3 vandalism already. How common are cases not covered by G3? —Kusma (t·c) 17:06, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
The amount of existing media that would be affected is hoped to be tiny. See item #3 in the banner above about proposing new criteria. --Izno (talk) 17:08, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
"Unusable" is subjective so can be dropped if that would make the proposal more acceptable....

To me unusable images would be (non-exclusive criteria) :

  • Images that lack full sourcing, authorship or attribution as to where the media was obtained from, and who the creators were.
  • Those that are of low technical quality, (out of focus, JPEG artifacts, badly lit) such that whats displayed isn't clear in relation to any provided context.
  • Images that cannot legally be displayed or shared with respect to US law (with consideration being given to the equivalent laws in other jurisdictions, such as those of the uploader)

The following would not be "unusable" grounds within the context of the proposed CSD, but would be grounds for requesting FFD or PROD on an image:-

  • Images where model or participant consent is not explicitly stated.
  • Images lacking a detailed contextual explanation of what the media contains, the articles in which it is intended to be used, and what points or content in those articles it is intended to support (essentially amounting to an "explicit image use rationale").

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:19, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is also WP:NOTCENSORED, so "explicit" is not a workable definition for a new criterion. Lack of authorship, attribution and source leads, in most cases, to lack of licensing information and is thus covered by F4 or F11. Files that are so corrupt that the subject is not identifiable should probably be covered by F2 already. "Illegal" is not something an admin can really determine and is thus not objective enough for speedy deletion. Regards SoWhy 18:18, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
You can always just PROD the files ... {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:37, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
How often do images like this come up at FFD? Do they always close as "delete"? Are we being swamped by them to the point that the FFD regulars are not finding enough time to handle the non-explicit images that are sent there? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:12, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
As an FFD volunteer, we get hardly any. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:28, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose: As mentioned, I see where you're going, but most of your edge cases can be covered by perhaps amending G3 with an "images uploaded solely for shock value with no possible encyclopedic use". ViperSnake151  Talk  17:10, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
    G3 already covers that, see Wikipedia:Vandalism#Types of vandalism: Uploading shock images [...] Regards SoWhy 20:06, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Out of the roughly 2000 deletions I have performed, I don't remember any that would fit this criterion. The speedy deletion policy is designed to reduce the volume at xFD. In the absence of a significant volume of problematic material, I can't see why we would adopt such a subjective policy with so many clear possibilities for disagreement. UninvitedCompany 18:15, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Out of the roughly 13,000 deletions I have performed, I don't remember any that would fit this criterion. Since what constitutes "explicit" is always going to be subjective—what's porn to you might be a noteworthy artwork or a useful medical illustration to me—such things are never going to be appropriate for speedy deletion unless they already fall into one of the existing criteria, in which case we don't need another. ‑ Iridescent 20:50, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose as the criterion is too complex and subjective. In my deleting I have not come across such images either, so they must be rare. Removal from articles can be done, and the pic left for FFD. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:48, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Query: Which current criteria would cover images that if assesed by a competent legal professional as potentially "obscene" (with respect to US Federal law, and those of the State of Virginia) would have to be removed for legal reasons? (Also such images should presumably be reported to a contact off wiki.) ? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:38, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
@ShakespeareFan00: That would likely be WP:G9, since its up to User:WMF Legal to decide that content would have to be removed for legal reasons --DannyS712 (talk) 08:43, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict)WP:G9 - the WMF has a legal team, and it is ultimately their job to assess if something is illegal and so to remove it. Galobtter (pingó mió) 08:44, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
  • If an image is unused & unusable, does it matter if it's explicit or not? "I oppose" is explicit, and I don't think anybody would have a problem with that. On the other hand, "I fucking oppose", is veering into obscenity. Cabayi (talk) 08:55, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

X3

Can someone add Permalinks to the AN discussion, the recently closed MfDs where various users expressed a need for X3, and the VPP where various users requested some version of X3? The discussion is so fagmented but the conclusion in favor of X3 is very clear. Also we are going to call it X3 not P3 even though it is for Portals. Legacypac (talk) 21:20, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Confirmed the X3 Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as mass created Portals now exists and pages get added when Template:Db-x3 is added. Legacypac (talk) 23:15, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

List of pages [2] there may be a better way to list them. Legacypac (talk) 01:46, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Indeed there is - that doesn't list pages created before June 27 or pages created outside of Portal: and then moved there, and includes redirects and already-deleted pages. quarry:query/34239 (all pages) or quarry:query/34240 (omits subpages). —Cryptic 03:15, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Useful Query for quantifying the issue, not so useful for tagging as the page names are not clickable and don't turn red as they are deleted. Legacypac (talk) 09:17, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Is this query what you're looking for? (Note that if someone else created the page at a different title and TTH moved it to the portal namespace, this query will show TTH as the creator, so double-check the history before tagging unless it has an obvious edit summary like "created new portal".) ‑ Iridescent 09:21, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Legacypac Quarry queries can be downloaded as a wikitable - see User:Galobtter/Portals by TTH. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:48, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Iridescent's and Galobtter's queries are perfect. Look at the creation rate - I spotted 5 a minute in some cases.
I'm not aware of any Portals created elsewhere and they don't work elsewhere (like draft) so page moves from outside spaces are not likely to be a big problem. He did rename a few Portal though so watch for that.
X3 does not address the equally problematic "rebooted" portals[3] or the approx 1000 built by other editors in exactly the same way using his instructions. I started building a list here User:Legacypac/not x3 portals but it is painstaking to check each one. Better to wait till X3 pages are deleted first as so many Portals one checks will go X3. Legacypac (talk) 09:59, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

G14

As far as I was aware DAB pages that have a primary topic and there is only 1 other (WP:2DABS) can be deleted as unnecessary DAB pages. This was quite clear in the past but it looks like since G6 was split, the inclusion of situation where there are only 2 topics and there is a primary topic has been lost for some reason. See User talk:Patar knight#Ross Greer (disambiguation) and User talk:Sir Sputnik#Magnus Lindberg (disambiguation). I would note though that DAB entries that are red links and part title matches do still count as "entries" for this purpose. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:16, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Looking at the plain wording of G14 as it is now, if there is a primary topic and a non-primary topic on a 2DAB, then it is still disambiguating two extant articles and ineligible for G14. My experience has been that they are then typically PRODed, so they show up at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Article_alerts for a week and gives room for editors who work with DABs to review them. This interpretation fits with the framework of CSD as getting rid of unambiguous cases and letting other deletion processes deal with less clear cases.
For DABs, those "disambiguating" one or zero DAB entries absolutely fail as DAB pages and are arguably actively unhelpful in navigation, while those with two entries do not. Those with two entries are more easily converted into valid DABs with the addition of only one additional entry or might be converted into a 2DAB page with no primary topic if the article at the base name doesn't have a solid claim to be the primary topic. Having a 2DAB page is at worst neutral, and an additional week to potentially save it isn't a big deal.
Looking through the history of G14/G6 I don't think that it ever explicitly allowed deletion of 2DABs with a primary topic:
  • August 2009: Added to G6 as "deleting unnecessary disambiguation pages
  • January 2013: G6 is broken out into bullet points
  • January 2013: "unnecessary is clarified as "those listing only one or zero links to existing Wikipedia articles."
  • March 2017: "links" to zero/one extant article is changed to "disambiguates" zero/one extant articles.
  • December 2018: G14 is split off from G6 with minimal changes.
My interpretation of Tavix's change in March 2017 is that linking the previous wording technically allowed DAB pages with zero valid dab entries but some links to existing articles, either in invalid DAB entries or a "See also" section, to escape speedy deletion. The new wording shows that the linked articles must be part of a valid dab entry, not just any link whatsoever. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 01:21, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I would support a speedy deletion option for disambiguation topics where there is one clear primary topic, only one other topic, and for which the primary topic page already contains a hatnote to the other topic, with no link to the disambiguation page. In that case, any reader looking up the term is already going to be taken to a page with an existing hatnote leading to the other topic, so there is no point in the disambiguation page existing. bd2412 T 17:46, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I fully agree with Patar knight. Dab pages with a primary topic and only one other link are pretty useless most of the time, but the emphasis here is on "most of the time". Such pages are normally dealt with using PROD, and often enough it would happen that somebody might come along and expand the page with additional entries. Or it might turn out that the page is a result of a bad move. Or it could disambiguate between two articles only because of a previous overzealous attempt at cleanup that had removed valid links. Etc, etc. There are too many possible scenarios and too many nuances for CSD to be appropriate, and there are too few pages of this kind getting deleted for there to be a need for an extension of the existing criteria. – Uanfala (talk) 00:07, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree with Uanfala that extending CSD to cover primary+1 disambiguation pages is not appropriate. In addition to the scenarios they list, in some cases there will be people navigating directly to the disambiguation page where they know or suspect the topic they are looking for is not primary but do not know what its title is. Whether this is likely will depend on factors that cannot be judged by a single admin reviewing CSD nominations. Thryduulf (talk) 09:22, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Clarification on G8

This section is transcluded from Wikipedia talk:Templates for discussion/Archive 26.

There are a whole host of unused documentation templates (1,111 to be exact). The vast majority are the result of the base page being redirected. For example, you have Template:Bible/doc. Well Template:Bible now redirects to Template:Bibleverse. Since the base page has been redirected, there is really no reason to keep the documentation. Technically you COULD redirect the old doc as well, but why? Again I want to emphasize this is ONLY regarding documentation subtemplates (I.E. Template:<sometemplate>/doc) that are UNUSED. It seems to me this is a clear WP:G8. Anyone have any strong feelings? --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:13, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

This is not a G8, as the parent page does exist. What is wrong with redirecting the doc of the old template to the doc of the new template? {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:21, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
To clarify, does G8 then apply to documentation pages for deleted or otherwise nonexistent templates? I would assume so, as documentation pages are technically subpages, though it is not entirely clear. ComplexRational (talk) 02:35, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I would say so. If Template;X doesn't exist and wasn't speedy deleted out of process, then Template:X/doc is a proper G8 deletion. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 02:49, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
If you really want to pursue the claim that doc pages of redirects should be deleted, then take it to the proper venue (RfD) rather than misusing speedy deletion criteria that do not apply. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:23, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
For goodness sake Pppery AGF. I'm discussing it at templates for deletion because they are TEMPLATES. You are of the opinion that G8 is not valid, but so far that is just your opinion. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:29, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Transcluded to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:32, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Simply redirecting them or deleting them per WP:CSD#G8 are both perfectly fine and functionally equivalent options. -- Ed (Edgar181)
  • Support only for non-subst templates. like CSD C1. It should await 7 days after tagging CSD before actually deletion. For any subst templates, should always be posted to TfD Hhkohh (talk) 23:01, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Zack, some of these could be the result of cut-and-paste moves, if the template at the base page was moved. Some could also be the result of a merge, for which the page should be preserved for attribution, and might not be properly labeled as such. I'd worry that expanding a speedy deletion criterion to this therefore could be problematic. --Bsherr (talk) 01:16, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • In my opinion these /doc pages leftovers should be deleted. A redirect has a function (or purpose if you will), in that it serves to lead users reaching it to the correct end-point. How exactly would a user reach an unused and unlinked sub-page of a page that itself was redirected? The only way is by manually searching for that exact title, and that should not be a valid result for a page that serves no purpose. --Gonnym (talk) 21:22, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) In reply to Gonnym, who I edit-conflicted with: I'm not necessarily saying we need to keep these unused or otherwise "orphaned" /doc subpages. I'm just saying that CSD is completely inappropriate to use in this case. I don't think you need to go about putting in a TFD for every one (hell, I don't really think we need to worry about these pages), but at the very least there needs to be a discussion to determine their fate. Primefac (talk) 21:24, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    As seems to be case with all the latest discussions making the system more efficient, more bureaucratic proceedings which serve absolutely no editors. The result of this will be that they will just get put up on TfD slowly, make the discussion list longer for no reason, and end up with the same exact arguments - "unused and should be deleted" and "redirect to new /doc page" - as there can't be any other argument (for valid unused /doc pages of redirect). --Gonnym (talk) 21:33, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    Or Zach could go through and BOLDly redirect all of the /doc subpages and call it good. It's a heck of a lot easier to undo the creation of a redirect than it is to deal with an undeletion, should it prove necessary. Primefac (talk) 21:38, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    Exactly, if we're striving for efficiency and we absolutely must do something about these doc subpages, then redirecting them is the one action that's the least time for everyone. And yes, a proposal for extending some CSD criterion to cover them is unlikely to pass: they don't do any harm that I can think of and there all sorts of problems that can arise if they get deleted: attribution could get broken (as pointed out by Primefac), or it might be difficult to fix errors resulting from template merges if you don't have access to the merged template's documentation. – Uanfala (talk) 02:29, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • No. ​ The /doc subpages do not meet the criteria of G8, and WP:G6 is not a deletion criteria that means "well I don't really like it so it should be deleted". In the Black Metal example above, the /doc actually precedes the newer doc, and there could have been an attribution issue if the newer /doc had been copied from the old one. There is nothing in G8 or G6 that allows for deletion of these templates, barring IAR from admins who don't really care and just click "delete" when they see a CSD tag. Primefac (talk) 21:24, 14 March 2019 (UTC) Reasonable argument made below... still not overly thrilled but w/e. Primefac (talk) 00:12, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support CSD If the base template was made into a redirect, then G6 should apply: the doc template was "orphaned as the result of a consensus at WP:TfD". In other cases, I note that the list at G8 says "Examples include", not "these are the only possible cases" as some above seem to want to interpret it. An unused doc subpage would be "a page dependent on a nonexistent page": doc subpages exist only to document a template, and if there's no template to be documented then it's dependent on something that doesn't exist. If someone really did do a cut-and-paste move of the doc page (but not the template? why?), WP:REFUND exists. Anomie⚔ 23:51, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
    Eh... fair point. I suppose my main concern is that some admins don't care why a template/page has been nominated, just that it's not an "obviously wrong" tag. I know REFUND exists, but I would just strongly caution anyone wanting to deal with this "issue" to take care and not just batch-nominate 1k+ pages, because that's when mistakes get made. Primefac (talk) 00:12, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Extend R2 to portals

This was withdrawn after discussion concluded that Portals shouldn't be moved to draftspace in the first place. I'm formally closing this now so it can be archived soon. -- Tavix (talk) 16:40, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

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

Two days ago WP:R2 was boldly extended to apply to redirects from the portal namespace. There appears to be some disagreement at least on what exceptions there should be. Could we decide on all that here first? Pinging involved editors: Legacypac, Thryduulf, Tavix. – Uanfala (talk) 19:01, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Mainspace and Portal space are both reader facing content spaces. Draft space is for stuff that is not intended for readers. Links between Mainspace and Portal space and vice versa are fine but if a portal is draftified it is exactly like draftifying an article so the redirect should be immediately deleted. When there were 1700 mostly dead portals this was not frequent problem but now we have 4500 new automated portals that are being examined and I expect a bunch will be placed in some Draft holding pen out of view while consideration of their future is done. Legacypac (talk) 19:09, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Legacypac, it is not clear that this is a very common occurrence that would require it to be covered by CSD. Also, draft portals can just be left in portal space. If they are not linked to from any articles or other portals, there is no fundamental problem with keeping unfinished portals around in portal space. The mass-produced automatic portals should be deleted, not draftified. Classic portals with many subpages simply can't be moved around in any meaningful way, so instead of being draftified, they should just be tagged with some template that tells any accidental readers that it is unfinished and that they should go read something else. —Kusma (t·c) 19:18, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Wait until Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Thousands of Portals is resolved. I don't see the point in draftifying portals if they are going to be deleted anyway. -- Tavix (talk) 19:13, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Main → Portal and Portal → Main redirects should not be speedily deleted under R2 as they are both reader-facing namespaces with encyclopaedic content. Such redirects will not always be optimal but that is a matter that should be discussed at RfD as deletion is not going to be the best action for all of them. This means that, if R2 applies to portals at all (which I have no strong opinions about) then the main namespace needs to be listed as an exception. Thryduulf (talk) 19:14, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
agreed 100% with Thryduulf's refinement. I disagree with waiting because the nuclear option is not going to delete all portals, only many portals. There are a bunch of legacy portals that may well be draftified and dealt with seperately. I actually tagged a portal=>Draft redirect R2 but it did not display properly, then I tagged it housekeeping with a not it was R2 and that was accepted. I don't see this change as an expansion, more a refinement of wording based on the principle of the CSD. Legacypac (talk) 19:19, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Then how about a separate bullet point for R2 that includes any other namespace to draft, so we don't get a bunch of potentially-confusing exceptions and includes anything that has been draftified (eg: templates, books). -- Tavix (talk) 19:24, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Good idea. Add the words "Also any redirect to Draft namespace, except from user namespace." This way anything draftified from any random spot (like I saw someone post a draft as a category recently) can be moved and the redirect nuked. Legacypac (talk) 19:32, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Legacypac, redirects created because a page was obviously created in the wrong namespace are already covered under G6. —Kusma (t·c) 19:34, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Tavix, the question is why we would want to move pages from non-mainspace to draft anyway. I am unconvinced that this is a good idea, as many namespaces have their own special features. Draft books should be in Book space, just as draft TimedTexts should be in TimedText namespace. —Kusma (t·c) 19:33, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
That makes sense to me. -- Tavix (talk) 19:42, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

The "special features" argument just convinced me no Portal should be in Draftspace. It breaks them anyway. Can you make that point at AN against the idea of sending Portals to Draftfor more work? Legacypac (talk) 19:58, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Legacypac, done. One problem with the current portals discussion is that it is so fragmented... but the AN discussion should fix the main issue soon. —Kusma (t·c) 20:20, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Point of order - I'm not following the discussion this was forked from so I don't really get what's happening, but the redirect criteria apply to redirects in any namespace, including portal redirects. If the proposal is to apply the R criteria to portals themselves, then oppose, R criteria are for redirects. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:31, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mentioning the requirements for new criteria in an edit notice?

There are plenty of examples of people on this page proposing new criteria or commenting on proposals for new criteria who seem unfamiliar with the requirements (Objective, Uncontestable, Frequent, Non-redundant) detailed in the page header. To help reduce this (especially for those who arrive via a link to a section), how about adding a slimmed down version of the header in an edit notice, linking to the header for full details? Perhaps something like:

Before proposing or commenting on new or expanded criteria note that CSD criteria require careful wording, and in particular, need to be:

  • Objective: Most reasonable people should be able to agree whether a page meets the criterion.
  • Uncontestable: Almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus.
  • Frequent: If a situation arises only rarely, it's usually easier, simpler, and fairer to delete it at the normal venue.
  • Nonredundant: If the deletion can be accomplished using a reasonable interpretation of an existing rule, just use that.

Note this is a summary of the requirements, see Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Header for details.

Although it might be possible to condense it still further - the point is to alert not overwhelm, and other improvements are almost certainly possible as well. Thryduulf (talk) 11:36, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Suggest Speedy closing proposals that clearly fail the new criterion criteria, and Speedy close CSD proposals that are not even accepted reasons for deletion. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:56, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
    • I wouldn't object to that in general, although in some cases they only need a slight tweak and in others speedy closing will be a lot of drama (especially I think anything related to UPE). I don't think that's incompatible with my suggestion though. Thryduulf (talk) 12:23, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

It's worth mentioning here that I've just created a new shortcut to the header listing the the requirements: WP:NEWCSD. Thryduulf (talk) 13:45, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Fails #4, redundant to the header.
    I don't think it's a matter of not noticing the new-criteria criteria. (And if it is, the first step is to remove the irrelevancies distracting from it - we absolutely don't need a "don't delete WP:CSD, we copied some text out of it four years ago" box; we don't need the "be polite and sign your posts" box; and the archive lists doesn't need to be full-width.) What we've been seeing lately is A) legitimate disagreement over whether criteria meet NEWCSD, and B) a suicidal headlong rush to vote on everything. B exacerbates A, because there isn't time to hammer out the obvious amendments that make a proposal meet NEWCSD before some dolt's plastered it all over CENT and started a formal RFC, and then we suddenly have four competing proposals for people to vote against without even fully reading. —Cryptic 14:28, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
    I should hope I'm not a dolt because you're making that statement as a general comment. ;) --Izno (talk) 14:51, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
    The purpose is very much to complement the header, for people who don't see it and/or read it, that's why it explicitly summarises it and links to it for full details. It's very much not redundant to it. The excessive number of proposals being made (sometimes on the wrong page - e.g. the X3 proposal at AN) without understanding the requirements is why we need to make it more in-your-face. And just like when evaluating a page against the criteria, if there is good faith disagreement about whether a proposal meets the requirements for a new criterion it doesn't. If people disagree whether something is objective it clearly isn't. If people disagree whether everything that covered by the criterion should be deleted then it is not uncontestable. The "we copied text" box is needed for proper attribution - see WP:CWW. The archives box though could be made less prominent, but I'm not sure it would make that much difference. Thryduulf (talk) 15:56, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Strongly support making such an editnotice. The vast majority of proposals at this page fail at least one of these obvious criteria, and it's a drain on editorial time. One of those "RtFM" things.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:11, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support - clearly an improvement. If rule #4 prevents us from implementing this obviously helpful advice, ignore the rule. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:19, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Given the comments above I have added an edit notice (Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion). Please tweak it. Thryduulf (talk) 13:52, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Twinkle now logs user-inputted options and should better handle noms in module space

This is about CSD tagging and not the criteria themselves, but just FYI if attempting a CSD of a Module, Twinkle should now place the tag on the documentation subpage, like is supposed to be done at WP:TfD. Also, the CSD log will now include the user-inputted options, like user for G5 or xfd for G6. Other recent changes here; please let me know if there are any issues! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:47, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Provide for CSD criterion X3: Mass-created portals

This section is transcluded from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive307.
Clearly both sides feel strongly about this question and both have advanced reasonable arguments. Those in favour typically cite the large amount of community effort required to clean up these portals through the normal MfD process, while those against often do not want to see useful content thrown out with the useless. There is also a significant minority who see a need for some fast-track process to avoid wasting community time, but think that this proposal goes too far. As it seems likely that a less-aggressive proposal would gain the support of most of the supporters as well as a large segment of those opposed, the arguments in opposition seem somewhat stronger. So, while there is a small majority in favour of the change, there is no consensus for it. GoldenRing (talk) 10:28, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

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

information Administrator note This proposal is being advertised at WP:VPP and WP:CD, and it has been requested that it stay open for at least 30 days. ~Swarm~ {talk} 05:14, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

I am entering and numbering this proposal in order to get it into the record, but am requesting that action on it be deferred until the current round of MFDs are decided.

As per User:UnitedStatesian, Create Criteria for Speedy Deletion criterion X3, for portals created by User:The Transhumanist between April 2018 and March 2019. Tagging the portals for speedy deletion will provide the notice to users of the portals, if there are any users of the portals. I recommend that instructions to administrators include a request to wait 24 hours before deleting a portal. This is a compromise between the usual 1 to 4 hours for speedy deletion and 7 days for XFD. The availability of Twinkle for one-click tagging will make it easy to tag the pages, while notifying the users (if there are any). Robert McClenon (talk) 04:21, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

This proposal should be posted in a wider venue, such as WP:VPR or WP:MFD. Many of those portals have been in place for months, making WP:AN too narrow a venue for them. CSD notices wouldn't be placed until after the discussion is over, and therefore would not serve to notify the users of those portals of the discussion. A notice to the discussion of this proposal, since it is a deletion discussion, should be placed on each of the portals, to allow their readers to participate in the discussion. The current round of MfDs are not a random sampling of the portals that were created, and therefore are not necessarily representative of the set. The portals themselves vary in many ways, including scope, the amount of time they've been accessed by readers, quality, number of features, picture support, volume of content, amount of work that went into them, number of editors who worked on them, length, readership, etc.    — The Transhumanist   07:09, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
How would you suggest to get a representative sample? Legacypac (talk) 07:20, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for asking. That would be difficult now, since there are already a bunch of portals nominated for MfD. If those were included, then the sample would already be skewed. I expect a truly random sample would reveal that some portals are worth keeping and others are not. A more important question would be "How would we find the portals worth keeping? Which is very similar to the question "what should the creation criteria for portals be?", the very thing they are discussing at the portal guidelines page right now. Many of these portals may qualify under the guideline that is finally arrived upon there. For example, they are discussing scope. There are portals of subjects that fall within Vital articles Level 2, 3, 4, and 5, and there are many portals of subjects of similar scope to the subjects at those levels. And many of the portals had extra work put into them, and who knows how many had contributions by other editors besides me. Another factor is, that the quality of the navigation templates the portals are powered by differs, and some of the portals are powered by other source types, such as lists. Some have hand-crafted lists, as there are multiple slideshow templates available, one of which accepts specific article names as parameters. Another way to do that is provide a manual list in the subtopics section and power the slideshow from that. Some of the portals are of a different design than the standard base template. Some are very well focused, contextually, while others are not. For example, some of the portals have multiple excerpt slideshows to provide additional context.    — The Transhumanist   07:46, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support in principle. Looking at the existing MFD discussions, TTH seems determined to drag and wikilawyer as much as possible to try to derail the discussions, even for blatantly and indefensibly inappropriate microportals like those discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portals for Portland, Oregon neighborhoods; it's not a good use of anyone's time to go through the same timesink 5000+ times. (The cynic in me says that a speedy criterion wouldn't work as while the creators wouldn't be able to decline the templates themselves, TTH and Dreamy Jazz would probably just follow the tagger around removing the speedy templates from each other's creations.) In practice, it would probably be more efficient to do what we did with Neelix and have a streamlined MFD nomination process, in which "created by TTH" is considered sufficient grounds for deletion at MFD and they default to delete unless someone can make a strong argument for keep. MFD is less gameable and also gives a space for people to defend them in those rare cases where they're actually worth keeping. (Every time I look, I find that the flood of inane and pointless TTH portals has spread further than I thought; shipping containers portal, anyone?) ‑ Iridescent 08:26, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
    Dreamy Jazz seems unlikely do that, having already decided during this debate to stop donating their time to Wikipedia. Certes (talk) 18:06, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment – Another option would be to move these to draft space. The templates and lua modules could be modified so that the portals render right in that namespace (I wish I would have thought of this before). Being in draft space would give time to fix their various problems (keeping in mind that micro-scope is not fixable), and identify the ones worth keeping. I would agree not to move any of them personally, and would propose/request such moves after the new creation criteria guidelines for portals are settled upon. I would also be willing to tag those that did not meet those guidelines with CSD (as creator), saving Legacypac the trouble of nominating them at MfD (he mentioned somewhere that he thought I should help clean up this "mess"). Another benefit of this strategy is that if any of them sit in draft space too long without further development, they automatically become subject to deletion per the draft space guidelines, and those that reach that age without any edits can be deleted en masse without time-consuming effort-wasting MfD discussions. This course of action would of course need the participation of some lua programmers to add the necessary functionality to the modules, which would be a good upgrade for those, to allow for portal drafts to be created in the future.    — The Transhumanist   09:15, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
P.S. @Iridescent and Legacypac: (pinging)    — The Transhumanist   09:28, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Absolutely not. The problem is that hundreds of portals on obscure topics makes an unmaintainable mess. Passing it to another namespace does not solve the problem which is that the portals are not helpful and are not maintainable. Automated creation of outlines/portals/anything must stop. Johnuniq (talk) 09:36, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • No. I tried moving one broken portal to Draft as a test and it broke even more stuff. Not worth the effort to modify everything for draft space and then let the same little group of editors release them willy nilly back into portal space. Since this group ignored their own Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines "portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." why should anyone trust them to follow stricter guidelines? Legacypac (talk) 09:57, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Definitely not. What possible benefit would there be to cluttering up another namespace with ≈5000 pages that will never serve any useful purpose? If you want to goof around with wikicode, nobody's stopping you installing your own copy of Mediawiki; we're not your personal test site. ‑ Iridescent 15:38, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • As a general rule, Portal pages should not be draftified. In fact, we should not usually move anything not designed to be an article to draft space. Draft portals should be in portal space, just like draft books should be in book space and draft templates in template space (pages with subpages are a pain to move, and many namespaces have special features that suggest keeping drafts in the same space if possible). If a portal is not ready for viewing by the general public, tag it with a relevant maintenance template and make sure it is not linked to from mainspace or from other portal pages.
  • In the case at hand, TT's mass created portals do not seem like they will all be soon made ready for wider consumption, so deleting them seems the better option. —Kusma (t·c) 20:15, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Many editors at the Village Pump discussion, the Tban discussion above, and at MfDs also supported this. We do not need to fragment this discussion further. Legacypac (talk) 05:12, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Proposal 1 will make this Proposal 4 moot. This Proposal 4 is not a proper CSD implementation. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:41, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
@SmokeyJoe: Proposal 1 is about stopping TTH from creating new portals. Proposal 4 is about deleting those he created in the last couple of months. How is P1 going to make P4 moot? —Kusma (t·c) 10:19, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
List them all in an MfD, if they must all be deleted. A CSD that enables self appointed decision makes for which should go and which might be ok, is inferior to MfD. MfD can handle a list of pages. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:24, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
If you want them all at MfD stop objecting to the listing of specific Portals at MfD. Legacypac (talk) 01:34, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
No. Some of the Portals I would support for deletion, and others definitely no. This makes the proposal for a CSD invalid. It fails the CSD new criterion criteria. The proposal is neither Objective or Uncontestable. It would pick up a lot of portals that should not be deleted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:44, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. No care at all went into these portals, they are mindless creations with loads of errors and little actual benefit for our readers. I would also support the restoration of all pre-existing portals to the pre-transhumanist version, the new "single page" version may require less maintenance, but is way too often clearly inferior (see e.g. this, which is more like vandalism than actual improvement, and has been reversed since). Fram (talk) 10:31, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment. Anyone restoring old multi-subpage portals should bear in mind that they will require maintenance. If there is no-one willing to maintain them, they, too are likely to be MfDed. No old-style portal with a willing and active maintainer has been converted as far as I know, so I suggest that anyone restoring them should be willing to maintain them. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 16:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
    • No. Converting an unmaintained but well-designed portal into an unmaintained semi-automated worse portal is not the way forward. Any claims that the new portals are maintained or don't need maintaining is false, as the many problematic new portals demonstrate. Fram (talk) 17:00, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
    • Portal:Germany was converted (more than once) although it has maintainers. To make sure your portal isn't "improved", you need to put a specific template on the page, which isn't very obvious. There are old-style multi page portals that require only minimal maintenance, and where the conversion removed specific features. All those should be reverted, also to protect the subpages from overzealous deleters (the worst is deleting the /box-footer subpages; this breaks all old revisions by removing a necessary closing div). —Kusma (t·c) 17:21, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose A mass-deletion of the new generation portals. Listing them at MfD will be sufficient for any that do not meet the criteria laid out in the portal guidelines (which are still under discussion). It makes little sense to remove the whole batch because some of them are problematic. They would need to be properly triaged to ensure the good ones are not caught in the process. I would of course, help with said triage. We're not trying to create more work for the community, just preserve good content. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 23:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment - You created more work for the community by creating thousands of portals, some of which do not work, and with no intention to maintain them. I see no evidence that this effort created good content that needs to be preserved. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:17, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
There is no new content in the automated portals, it's all poorly repackaged bits of existing content. Legacypac (talk) 04:40, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
All portals, old or new, good or bad, manual or automated, repackage existing content. That's their job. New content belongs in articles. Certes (talk) 11:20, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose per wumbolo below: criterion P2 already covers a number of these, the rest should be discussed. I still stand by my original comment which follows this addition. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 22:37, 13 March 2019 (UTC) Original comment: Weak oppose on principle. CSD is a necessary evil, and I don't think we should be hasty to add another criterion that skips our usual consensus process. I'm fine with nuking these portals and not opposed to deleting them, any diamonds in the rough will prove their worth by being created again, but I would prefer one big MfD with the rationale "created by The Transhumanist" which allows proper determination of consensus and gives those who want to spend their time triaging a chance to do so. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 08:03, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
Building multipage MfDs like Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portals for Portland, Oregon neighborhoods is time consuming and tedious. A temporary CSD is rhe way to go. Consensus against this mess of new portals has already been established at VP, AN and in the test MfDs. Legacypac (talk) 17:20, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support due to the massive amount of time it would take to put the ~4500 portals through MfD. MfD has been swamped with portal deletion requests from some time ago, and I can't see all this stuff removed via MfD in the foreseeable future (as someone said earlier, there is still a lot of Outlines left over from one of TTH's previous projects, so who knows how long it would take for MfD to delete all of this). This CSD X3 would streamline the process, and it would probably only take a few days to a week. It would help, as also mentioned earlier, to extend the criterion to the other users involved in the mass creation of these portals. Rlin8 (☎·✎·📧) 03:31, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
    • MfD has never had an issue to nominations of list of pages. 4500 separate MfD nominations would be absurd, but a list would be OK. If each is new, and has a single author, notifications of the author will be trivial. A CSD proposal shortcuts a discussion of the merits of the new portals, and pre-supposes deletion to be necessary, contrary to deletion policy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:01, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
TTH demands we place notification on every portal. We can skip notifying him, but building even 20 page MfD's is very time consuming. How do you propose to discuss 4500 or even 100 assorted portals at a time? These took 3 min to make - but far more than 3 min to list, tag, discuss and vote, then delete - when you add up all the time required from various editors and Admins. The test MfDs are sufficent and the very strong opposition to this automated portal project justifies this temporary CSD. Legacypac (talk) 04:16, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
"TTH demands we place notification on every portal"? Legacypac, I have missed that post by him. If he did that, it needs to be repudiated. If these are new pages, and he is the only author, it is sufficient to notify him once. If all 4500 are essentially variations on the same thing, as long as the full set is defined, and browsable, we can discuss them all together at MfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:34, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
User:SmokeyJoe during the Portland Oregon neighborhood MFD I specifically said I was not tagging all the related portals but he insisted I tag here [5] I could not get support in the section above to relax the MfD tagging because others wanted this CSD. During the Delete Portals RFC TTH went all out insisting every portal including the community portal be tagged for deletion - then he did it himself. That brought in all kinds of casual infrequent editors who were mostly against deleting the community portal. (Even though that was Pretty much pulled out of consideration for deletion before the tagging project). That massive tagging derailed the deletion RFC. By making cleanup as hard as possible TTH is making a lot of people want to nuke everything. Legacypac (talk) 06:11, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
Legacypac's analysis is erroneous and misleading. The WP:ENDPORTALS RFC was a deletion discussion, and posting a notice on each page up for deletion is required by deletion policy. Note that the Community Portal was only mentioned twice. A portal that was the basis for about 50 oppose votes was the Current Events portal. Neither the Community Portal nor the Current Events portal were exempted in the proposal at any time. If you didn't count those, that left the count at about 150 in support of eliminating portals to about 250 against.    — The Transhumanist   07:25, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
@SmokeyJoe: (edit conflict) See the top of this section for the referred to statement, which is not exactly as he quoted. A notice posted at the top of the portals slated by this proposal would be appropriate. Legacypac has been posting notice for his multi-page nominations using the {{mfd}} template, which auto-generates a link to an mfd page of the same title as the page the template is posted on. Rather than following the template's instructions for multiple pages, he's been creating an MfD page for each, and redirecting them to the combined mfd. Then a bot automatically notifies the creator of each page (me), swamping my user talk page with redundant notifications. Thus, Legacypac believes he'll have to create thousands of mfd redirect pages, and that I somehow want 3500+ notifications on my talk page.    — The Transhumanist   07:10, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
You want us to manually tag pages for deletion that you used an automated script to create? You flooded Wikipedia with useless pages in violation of WP:MEATBOT but you are worried about having to clean up your talkpage notices? Just create an archiving system for your talkpage like we did for User:Neelix's talkpage. If you don't want notices you could start tagging pages that fail your own guidelines with "delete by author request" instead of commenting on how we will do the cleanup. Legacypac (talk) 08:37, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
TTH, if you don't want so many deletion notices on your talk page, then remember in future not to create thousands of spam pages. Please help with the cleanup, rather than complaining about it.
@Legacypac: good work MFDing the spam, but it does seem that you are using a somewhat inefficient approach to tagging. Have you tried asking at WP:BOTREQ for help? In the right hands, tools such as AWB make fast work of XfD tagging. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:21, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support whatever course of action that will result in every portal created in this manner being deleted with the minimal of time and effort required. TTH has set up his automated tool, created a massive mess, and left it unattended for others to sort out. It should take less time to clean up this mess than it did to make it, not more. Nuke the lot and if there is anything of value lost then TTH can manually request pages to be restored one at a time at DRV. Fish+Karate 11:19, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support per Fish and karate. RGloucester — ☎ 14:20, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose as written. I could support something that explicitly excluded portals which are in use and/or are being developed, but the current proposal to indiscriminately delete everything, including active portals, unless the admin chooses to notify any editors and the ones notified happen to be online in a narrow time frame is significantly overly broad. Thryduulf (talk) 01:54, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support Not that portals are that bad, but I don't think we need portals on smaller subjects. (Portal:Spaghetti when we already have Portal:Pasta? Portal:Nick Jr., anyone?) Some might be worth keeping, but a lot are unneeded and unmaintainable. At least it's not a Neelix case. SemiHypercube 16:57, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
    • @SemiHypercube: "Some might be worth keeping" is actually an argument against this proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 12:08, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
      • @Thryduulf: Kind of, but that might be a reason not to just mass delete all at once. In the Neelix case there were some redirects that were actually useful, so a separate CSD criterion was used to keep some redirects at the admins' discretion, so this might be a similar case (before you say that contradicts my "it's not a Neelix case" statement, I meant that in terms of what the redirects were about) SemiHypercube 12:23, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
      • It violates points 1 and 2 of the requirements for CSD criteria: objectivity and unconestability. Unless all the portals covered should be speedily deleted then none of them should be. If you only want to delete some of them then you should be opposing this criterion (just like you should have opposed the subjective Neelix criterion). Thryduulf (talk) 12:34, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

*Support Only realistic way to deal with these. Johnbod (talk) 01:57, 11 March 2019 (UTC) Duplicate !vote struck. GoldenRing (talk) 10:16, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

  • Request the posting of a notice at the top of each of the pages being nominated here for mass deletion, as required by the Deletion Policy. This proposal is currently a gross violation of the deletion policy because it is a discussion to delete 3500+ pages, that have been created over the span of a year, that are presently being viewed hundreds of thousands of times per month (projected to millions of times over the coming year) by readers of Wikipedia. The proposal for mass deletion has been made without the required notice being posted at the top of the pages to be deleted. This is being decided by a handful of editors unbeknownst to the wider community, namely, the readership of the portals to be deleted. It may be that those reading such notices would decide that the portals should be deleted, but the point here is that you are denying them the opportunity to participate in the deletion discussion as required by the deletion policy.    — The Transhumanist   21:12, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Request you stop wasting people's fucking time. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:41, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Support opposing anything TTH says from now on. Per OiD. ——SerialNumber54129 13:30, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Strong oppose taking ad hominem arguments into consideration. Thryduulf (talk) 13:49, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Oppose WP:BLUDGEONING. ——SerialNumber54129 15:48, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment Neelix created about 50,000 redirects, which were reviewed by the community. The number of portals is an order of magnitude smaller. If X3 is to be introduced, it should involve a similar review process. We should certainly delete portals which have too narrow a scope or are of poor quality and cannot be improved. However, systematic deletion of all portals which qualify for consideration, purely on an ad hominem argument, would be as wrong as semi-automatic creation. Certes (talk) 10:51, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Absolutely not. Look at the rate these were created [6] sometimes several dozen an hour, and sometimes an average of 12 seconds each. If so little thought went into creation, why make deletion so difficult? The Neelix cleanup took far too long (I was a big part of it) and we deleted the vast majority of those redirects anyway the extra hard way. As far as I could see the editors who insisted we review everything did none of the reviewing. Also, these were created in violation of WP:MEATBOT which is a blockable or at least sanctionable offense Legacypac (talk) 11:04, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Two wrongs do not make a right - it is much more important that we get the cleanup right than it happens quickly. Whether or not TTH is blocked or otherwise sanctioned is completely irrelevant. While many (maybe even most) of the created portals should be deleted not all of them should be, and this needs human review: see requirement 2 for new CSD criteria at the top of WT:CSD. Thryduulf (talk) 12:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
@Thryduulf, Certes, SmokeyJoe, and Legacypac: Concerning the rate, Legacypac's observation is not accurate. What the edits he is citing do not show, is the method by which the pages were created: they were created in batches, in tabs. Before saving, all the pages/tabs were inspected. For the pages that did not pass muster, such as those that displayed errors (this did not catch all errors, because lua errors can be intermittent or turn up later due to an edit in source material being transcluded), the tabs for those were closed. In a batch of 50, 20 or 30 might survive the cull (though batch sizes varied). Some tabs got additional edits in addition to inspection, to fix errors or remove the sections the errors were in, or further development. After all the tabs in a batch were inspected and the bad ones culled, the remaining ones were saved. That's why the edits' time stamps are so close together. If you look more closely, you'll see the time gap is between the batches rather than the individual page saves. Therefore, WP:MEATBOT was not violated.    — The Transhumanist   18:55, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
He claims [7] he created 500 portals in 500 to 1000 minutes. and is using a script Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion#User:The_Transhumanist/QuickPortal.js If this is not MEATBOT we should refind MEATBOT as meaningless. Legacypac (talk) 19:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
A minute or two per portal of the new design sounds about right. Note that the script doesn't save pages. It puts them into preview mode, so that the editor can review them and work on them further before clicking on save.    — The Transhumanist   19:39, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
@Legacypac and The Transhumanist: As I said above, the method of creation is irrelevant to this proposal, as is what (if any) sanction is appropriate. Likewise discussions of WP:MEATBOT don't affect this at all. What matters is only that these pages exist but some of them should not, this proposal needs to be rejected or modified such that it deletes only those that need deleting without also deleting those that do not. Thryduulf (talk) 20:42, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Procedural note I have advertised this discussion at WP:VPP and would encourage others to add links where they think interested editors might see. I think this should remain open for 30 days, as it is quite a significant policy change. GoldenRing (talk) 09:24, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support now that the MfDs (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) are closing with strong consensus around delete, it is clear this is the fastest path to improving the encyclopedia (which is what we are here for, remember?) Any argument that 3,500 more portals have to go through MfD is strictly throwing sand in the gears. It is going to be enough manual labor pulling the links to the deleted portals from all the templates and pages they have been added to. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:15, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose and keep all. WP:P2 covers unnecessary portals, and there is no rationale presented other than WP:IDLI to delete a large proportion of all of them, which were all kept after a RfC in 2018. The next time content policies are created at AN by the cabal of admins, I am retiring from Wikipedia. wumbolo ^^^ 16:40, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
    @Wumbolo: Well, if it came to that, take it to WP:RFARB first. Given the past history of WP:FAITACCOMPLI and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS extremism (i.e., WP:FALSECONSENSUS) cases, I have little doubt that ArbCom would agree to take a case about a gaggle of anti-portal people WP:GAMING the consensus-formation process by inventing sweeping policy changes out of their butts in a venue few content editors pay attention to and which is clearly out-of-scope for such a decision, even if it somehow had sufficiently broad input (e.g., via WP:CENT). I'm skeptical any alleged consensus is going to come out of this discussion, anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:33, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support This is a repeat of the Neelix situation. ―Susmuffin Talk 00:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    • @Susmuffin: The situation has similarities, but the proposed criterion is not comparable. Criterion X1 applied only to redirects created by Neelix that the reviewing administrator reasonably believed would be snow deleted if discussed at RfD (i.e. they had to evaluate each redirect), this criterion would apply to every portal created by TTH in the timeframe without any other conditions and without the need for anyone to even look at anything other than the date of creation. Thryduulf (talk) 00:13, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
      • Honestly, there are far too many portals to be deleted through the usual channels. However, an quick evaluation would be reasonable, provided we keep the portal system itself. ―Susmuffin Talk 00:24, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Unlike Neelix who created some reasonable redirects along the way, these autogenerated portals are of uniformly low quality. The community has looked at representive samples across a variety of subject areas at MFD and the community has already deleted 143 of the 143 portals nominated at closed MfDs. The yet to be closed MfDs are headed to increasing that number. No one has suggested any alternative deletion criteria for X3. Legacypac (talk) 00:45, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
That nobody has suggested an alternative is irrelevant - it's not up to those who oppose this proposal to fix it, and those who support it are by-and-large ignoring the objections. The MfDs have been selected as a representative sample of those that, after review, are not worth keeping and have been reviewed by MfD participants. This does not demonstrate that deletion without review is appropriate - indeed quite the opposite. Remember there is no deadline, it is significantly more important that we get it right than we do things quickly. Thryduulf (talk) 09:59, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Not particularly similar to the redirect situation that occurred; portals are vastly different in nature and composition from simple redirects. North America1000 03:16, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose as unwarranted and dangerous (and circular reasoning). First, we do not modify CSD without a strong community (not admins' star chamber) consensus that an entire class of material is not just categorically unwanted but so unwanted that it should be deleted on sight without any further consideration. It's our most dangerous policy, and a change like this to it should be an RfC matter at WP:VPPOL. In theory, it could be at WT:CSD, except there is not yet any establishment of a consensus against these portals, and VPPOL is where that would get hashed out, since it's a project-wide question of content presentation and navigation (and maintenance, and whether tools can permissibly substitute for some manual maintenance, and ...). The cart is ahead of the horse here; we can't have a speedy deletion criterion without already having a deletion criterion to begin with. I strongly agree with SmokeyJoe: "Oppose any and all notions of creating new CSD criteria at any drama board. Discussions here are too rushed, too emotive, too reactionary."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:05, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose – WP:P2 covers problematic portals just fine. A concerning issue here is that some users herein appear to simply not like portals in general, and so there are several arguments above for mass deletion as per this "I don't like it" rationale. Mass deletion should be a last step, not a first step, and portals should be considered on a case-by-case basis. North America1000 22:22, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
You created some with the same tools. One or two of your creations are now at MfD which is why you are now engaging against this solution. We will consider each of your creations at MfD. Legacypac (talk) 02:34, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
My !vote here is based upon my view of the matter at hand, and as such, it stands. Period. Regarding my portal creations, so what? You come across as having a penchant for scolding content creators on Wikipedia if you don't like the medium that is used. Please consider refraining from doing so, as it is unnecessary, and patronizing. North America1000 01:12, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Northamerica1000: I agree - for example, I actually welcome the creation of Portal:Economics because I think econ should be established as distinct from business as in Portal:Business and economics. Qzekrom 💬 theythem 02:20, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - this CSD seems have to no more objective criteria than "shoot unless someone defends it". For this to be justified, they'd have to explain how no-one reacting within 24 hours was sufficient reasoning. As far as the initial proposal included, it didn't contain any acceptable objective criteria for something warranting deletion on quality grounds. Far worse, it didn't contain suitable justification (whether popularity/quality) for these portals to impose such a major hindrance to Wikipedia as to warrant a process with as few eyes (per consideration) as CSD. The nominator might have had more luck with a PortalPROD mechanism. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:09, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
This CSD exactly meets each criteria for CSD's at the WP:CSD page. It is clear. It is easy to decide if the page meets the CSD. We ran 145 of these portals through MfD already and none survived. Numerous editors suggested this CSD in the Village Pump discussion. These mass created portals universally have the same flaws. Therefore this oppose rational is flawed. Legacypac (talk) 02:34, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
If the Portals Project had exercised discretion so far, then we would be in a very different place. But it's utterly outraegous to ask the community to devote more time to assessing this spam than the Portal Project put into creating them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:10, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Could these portals be marked to be spared?Guilherme Burn (talk) 13:03, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
@Guilherme Burn: not according to the proposal as written. The only chance of saving is if an admin chooses to notify and wait 24 hours and somebody objects within those 24 hours and someone spots that CSD has been declined previously if it gets renominated. Thryduulf (talk) 14:01, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
@Guilherme Burn: Portal:Cities is totally moribund and unread, and has never had a single participant. Portal:Architecture dates from 2005 and wasn't created by TTH or this tag-team, so wouldn't be deleted regardless (although I imagine the enormous wall of pointless links which TTH's bot dumped onto the page a couple of months ago would be reverted). ‑ Iridescent 14:08, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
@Iridescent and BrownHairedGirl:One portal that does not meet Mfd criteria is enough for me to keep my opinion. Portal:Cities Although poor visualized is an important and good quality portal and the Portal:Sculpture (erroneously I quoted another portal) as well.Guilherme Burn (talk) 13:20, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
@Guilherme Burn: please can you clarify that statement that One portal that does not meet Mfd criteria is enough for me to keep.
Are you saying that you are willing to personally scrutinise a few thousand drive-by Portals at MfD in order to find the one which should be kept? Or do you want others to do that work?
TTH as made it very clear that these portals took on average between one and two minutes each to create ([8] Have you tried creating 500 portals? It is rather repetitious/tedious/time-consuming (from 500 to 1000 minutes)). So many multiples of that-one-to-two minutes per portal do you think it is fair to ask the community to spend scrutinisng them? And how much of that time are you prepared to give? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:12, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
So many multiples of that-one-to-two minutes per portal do you think it is fair to ask the community to spend scrutinisng them?Yes. The community also failed to set criteria for creating portals. What is the difference of Portal: Lady Gaga to Portal: ABBA? For me both should be excluded. If the community not had problems to create a portal for a unique singer, why now have problems with someone who has decided to create portals for lot of singers? And to be honest I do not think so much work like that, Mfd can be executed in blocks excluding several portals at the same time.Guilherme Burn (talk) 17:11, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per SmokeyJoe et al. Completely unnecessary to override already existing procedure. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  put'r there  17:12, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
    • @Paine Ellsworth: the administrative work of trawling through several thousand drive-by-created micro-portals is huge. Cleaning up this flood of portalspam through MFD requires a huge amount of editorial time, vastly more than was involved in creating the spam.
If you think that existing procedure is fine, why aren't you devoting large hunks of your time to doing the cleanup by the laborious procedure you defend? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:33, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Because...? I don't know, I guess I think this whole thing is rather more of a knee-jerk reaction than a brainy, measured response. Sure I've done my share of big, teejus jobs for the project and plan to continue (on my terms). I have a lot of respect for editors like yourself and TTH who've been lifting this project out of the primal soup of its beginnings even longer than I have (I went over ten in January, or was it Feb? whatever) and I'm tired of seeing good, solid editors get reamed for their work and retire, just leave or get banned. Don't think it can't happen to you, because as good as you are, neither you nor the rest of us are immune to the gang-up-on-em mentality that turns justice into vengeance 'round here. Think you should also know if you don't already that I'm about 95 farts Wikignome and 5 parts other, and it takes a lot less for us to think we're being badgered and handled. I voted correctly for me and my perceptions, and I don't expect either of us will change this unwise world one iota if you vote you and yours! WTF ever happened to forgiveness? REspectfully, Paine Ellsworth, ed.  put'r there  13:28, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
But it seems to me that the unintended effect of what you are both saying is something like "I am not making any effort to assist the cleanup of this mass portalspam, but I will take the effort to oppose measures which reduce the huge burden on those who are actually doing that necessary cleanup work".
As I say, I do not believe that is what either of you intend. But all I see from either of you is opposition to any restraint on the portalspammer, and opposition to anything which would assist the cleanup. I respect the fine principles from which you two start, but I urge you to consider the effects on the community both of not easing the cleanup burden and of continuing to describe the likes of TTH in positive terms. Look for example at my post in a thread above about the #Lack_of_good_faith_from_User:The_Transhumanist, and at Iridiscent's observation above that of TTH's previous history of spamming useless pages.
As to lifting this project out of the primal soup of its beginnings ... that's an extraordinary way to describe TTH's spamming of hundreds, if not thousands, of useless, unfinished micro-portals. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:53, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
I am not making any effort to assist with mass deletions, beyond !voting to delete the clearer cases. We already have enough enthusiasts working in that department. Until recently, I had been adjusting individual portals and enhancing the modules behind them to improve quality, but I slowed down when it became obvious that my contributions in that area will be deleted. Certes (talk) 00:19, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
So that's as I feared, @Certes: members of that WikiProject are leaving it to others to clean up the mess created by the WikiProject and its members.
That only reinforces my impression of a collectively irresponsible project, which doesn't restrain or even actively discourage portalspam, doesn't try to identify it, and doesn't assist in its cleanup.
That's a marked contrast with well-run projects. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:06, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
To editor BHG: not a surprising perspective, possibly a hasty generalization, however that's not your worst move. Your worst move is to consider "mass deletions" of what you deem "portalspam" as better than the "mass creations" of portals. Who's really to say? As an editor mentions below, "...these portals are doing no harm so great that they can be deleted without due process." So maybe you're wrong about those mass deletions that portray some portals as WMDs instead of the harmless windows into Wikipedia that they were meant to be? No matter, at present you are part of the strong throng. If you're right, you're right. But what if you and the strong throng are wrong? May things continue to go well with you! Paine Ellsworth, ed.  put'r there  07:01, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support and also apply it to those created by Northamerica1000, who has made such useless portals as Portal:Strawberries and Portal:Waffles. Reywas92Talk 08:26, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support per F&K (whatever course of action that will result in every portal created in this manner being deleted with the minimal of time and effort required) and SN (nuke from orbit). I'll be honest I don't know enough to know whether it should be a X3 or a P2 or a single MfD list with 4,500 entries... but it should not need to involve manually tagging pages that were created by a bot or otherwise spending any real time figuring out which should be kept and which should not be kept. Delete them all. If editors feel like this portal or that portal should be kept, let them make the case for undeletion afterwards which can be examined on a case-by-case basis. (If that process is followed, it goes without saying that the portal creator should be banned from making any such undeletion requests.) Leviv ich 17:25, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    How are we supposed to work out what is worth undeleting, short of downloading all portals in advance lest they be deleted? Certes (talk)
    If an editor is not aware of a portal existing, then that editor shouldn't be asking for it to be kept. If there are particular portals that editors know they want saved, then they should have an opportunity to request that it be saved. But there should be no one-by-one examination of thousands and thousands of portals created by one user using semi-automatic methods. Leviv ich 19:39, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    Kill them all and let God sort them out is very much not the way Wikipedia works and is very much not the way it should work. Why should the review be restricted to administrators (as your proposal would require)? Why is it preferable to significantly harm the encyclopaedia by deleting good portals than to do the job properly and delete only those that actually need deleting (which are doing significantly less harm by existing than deleting good ones would cause)? Thryduulf (talk) 18:06, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    So let me create several thousand pages semi-automatically, and then I'll put it to you to go through them one by one and tell me which should be deleted and why? I don't think that's how it should work. It should work in reverse. The default should be delete them all, with some process for allowing people to request that particular portals not be deleted. BTW, when I say "all portals" I mean all portals covered by this proposal, not all portals that exist on Wikipedia. Leviv ich 19:39, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    If an editor created several thousand pages semi-automatically, the correct sequence of events is to analyse a representative sample to determine whether consensus is that they are (a) all good, (b) mostly good, (c) all bad, (d) mostly bad, or (e) a mixture. If (a) then no action is necessary, if (b) then individual deletion nominations are the correct response. If (c) then a CSD criterion to remove all of them is appropriate, if (d) or (e) then a CSD affectingly only the bad ones should be explored. In this the situation is somewhere between (d) and (e) depending on your point of view, but this proposal is treating them as (c). As I've said several times, I'm not opposed to a criterion proposed (in the right place) that caught only the bad ones and allowed for objections - that is not this proposal. This situation is frequently compared to Neelix, but the proposal is very different - this one: All pages created between Time A and Time B, unless anyone objects to the optional tagging within 24 hours. Neelix: All pages created between Time A and Time B that would be snow deleted if nominated at RfD, retargetting would not lead to a useful redirect and no other editor has materially edited the redirect. Do you now understand the fundamental difference? Also remember that pages can be tagged by bot. Thryduulf (talk) 20:56, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    Yes. We also need to clarify one important detail of the proposal: would an editor be required to look at the portal before applying CSD, or is there an assumption that everything created by this editor in that time period is automatically rubbish and does not deserve assessment? Certes (talk) 22:29, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    If a human being didn't spend a lot of time making a page, then human beings should not spend much time deciding whether to keep it. I put it to you again: suppose tomorrow I create 5,000 new pages and ask you to go through them and decide which to keep and which to delete. That would be insane; this is a website of volunteers; my doing such a thing would be disruptive. It would make work for others. Nobody reading this thinks it would be a good idea for me to do such a thing. Yet this is what is essentially being asked of us. Insofar as I have a !vote, I !vote no. Delete them all. They are all bad. Any that are good can be recreated as easily as they were created in the first place. Letting people flag keepers in one way or another is a perfectly reasonable way to prevent the baby from being thrown out with the bathwater. But yes, my starting point is that all of them should be deleted because none of them should have been made in the first place, and they do not have content value. Some portals are the product of careful creation and extensive work, but not 5,000 or however-many automatically created by one editor. The quantum portal idea is a much better idea, anyway. Leviv ich 02:38, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    I've alreadyanswered this immediately above, but as you apparently don't like the answer I'll respond again. If you create 5000 new pages in good faith (which TTH did), then the correct response is for others to go through and look at a representative sample, then gain a consensus about whether they are all bad, mostly bad, a mixture, mostly good or all good. This has been done with TTH's portals and while you may think they are all bad that is not the consensus view, especially as others have taken over some and either have improved them or are working on improving them. This means that it is important that only the bad ones are deleted meaning any proposal (such as this one) to delete all of them is overbroad and needs to be opposed. Thryduulf (talk) 10:03, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    This statement by Thryduulf is incorrect on many levels. Who has taken over and improved any of his creations? Where is the concensus view that they are not all bad when so far zero of his creations have been kept at MfDs. Where is the proof any of this was in good faith when he admits several sections down that no one (including him) has followed WP:POG Legacypac (talk) 10:38, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    Are you even reading the comments made by those who disagree with you because I'm not seeing evidence of it, especially when it comes to the MfDs (to reiterate, a reviewed selection of the worst pages being deleted by consensus but not unanimously in all cases does not provide evidence of the need for deletion of all of them without possibility of review). Thryduulf (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    Thryduulf, so I spend less than 1 minute per page creating 5,000 pages; you and others spend–what, an hour, cumulatively, at least?–per page to analyze it, discuss it, vote it, close it, and delete it. I spend 5,000 minutes; the community spends 5,000 hours. With all due respect I am flabbergasted to hear such a high-ranked Wikipedian express the view that this is OK or preferred. Even with your representative sample approach, say it's 100 portals that are looked at, that's still 100 hours of labor forced upon volunteers. In my opinion, no one should be allowed to make 5,000 pages without going through something like a BAG process to seek community approval. There was once a time, years ago, when it made sense to, for example, automatically create a stub for every known city and town in the world. I believe that time has long since passed; there are not 5,000 pages that can be created automatically that we need to have that we do not already have (IMO). And as for consensus, if they're not being kept at MfD, the consensus is clear. Those portals that people maintain manually are the same ones that can be flagged as exceptions to a mass-deletion. So I feel like we're on the same page about consensus, but I'm saying the consensus to keep a particular portal can be effectuated by allowing people to flag them as exceptions to mass deletion, whereas you seem to be suggesting: let's get together and spend an hour per portal to decide if it should be kept, even though nobody spent anywhere near that time creating it in the first place. If that's where we are, we'll have to agree to disagree, because I fundamentally don't believe these portals are worth a one-by-one analysis, and I believe the representative sample approach you advocate has been done and has led to the conclusion that these are worth mass deleting with exceptions. I guess that's for a closer to make the ultimate decision about, but for my part, from uninvolved editors, I'm seeing a lot more support than oppose for mass deletion. Leviv ich 14:42, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    @Levivich: If you're just going to ignore all the explanations I give in response to you (twice) and all the explanations elsewhere from me and others about why a reviewed selection of the worst being deleted (and not unanimously in all cases) is not evidence of the need for all of them to be deleted without possibility of review by others then it is clear we will never agree. Fortunately, per WP:VOLUNTEER, nobody is being forced to do anything they don't want to do - including you - and it's really disappointing that someone as experienced as you feels the need to prevent that work being done by others just because you don't want to. Perhaps between now and the time this is closed those in support of this overbroad proposal will actually choose to address the points in opposition but unless they do the only possible outcomes are no consensus or consensus against. Thryduulf (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    Thryduulf, I heard you say: pick a representative sample and decide if they're all bad, some bad, etc. As I understand it, a representative sample has been sent to MfD with consensus to delete almost all of them, if not all of them (I'm not sure if lists I've seen are complete). Then you say that just because the sample is all-delete doesn't mean the whole category is all-delete. I infer you think the sample is not well-chosen? By TTH's admission there are like 4,500–5,000 portals, and a tiny tiny percentage of those are being manually maintained–like less than 5%. Are we on the same page about the facts so far? If so, where do you see consensus other than "delete 95% of these things"? Why can't we tag the 100 that are manually maintained and delete the remaining 4,500? I am reading what you're writing, but I am not understanding it. Leviv ich 16:44, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support: these portals are easy to create semi-automatedly and contain no information not found in articles so we're not losing any information from Wikipedia, which sets this apart from most other CSD criteria. An alternative proposal I would support is to expand the remit of P2 to apply to any portals with fewer than one-hundred pages under their scope (or alternatively, fewer than one-hundred notable topics if there is evidence that the portal creators and users are planning to create such topics as articles). If a topic doesn't have 100 pages on it at the bare minimum, there's absolutely no reason to focus a portal around it. Even for portals covering tens of thousands of articles, reader interest is very, very low and the current semi-automated busywork is not serving the readers. — Bilorv (he/him) (talk) 19:05, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    • @Biorv: a proposal for expansion of speedy deletion criterion P2 is being discussed currently at [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion}} (which is where proposals related to speedy deletion criteria should be held, not AN), so I will refrain from explaining here why I oppose your suggestion to avoid splitting the discussion. Thryduulf (talk)
  • Support with exceptions. I support the speedy deletion of all portals auto-created in recent months as it seems excessive and unnecessary. However, those few portals which are manually maintained in good faith should be kept. Down the line we need to take another look at a notability threshold to keep a lid on portalmania. Bermicourt (talk) 22:37, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    • If you believe there should be exceptions for portals maintained in good faith (and I agree there should be), then you should be opposing this proposal in favour of an alternative one that allows for that. Thryduulf (talk) 22:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    X3 only covers the mass created automated portals started by TTH so already excludes the type of portal User:Bermicourt wants to exclude. Thryduulf is muddying the facts. Legacypac (talk) 23:08, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose because a) on procedural grounds this shouldn't be discussed at the AN "closed shop" and b) because these portals are doing no harm so great that they can be deleted without due process. It is not TTH's fault that the guidelines for portal creation are permissive. Triptothecottage (talk) 02:56, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment: I have already voted here but I just wanted to provide an example of how much thought was going into the creation of these portals. Portal:Aquatic ecosystem was created by TTH on Aug 15 2018 and in classified as "Complete" despite having 4 selected images. An identical portal was created at Portal:Aquatic ecosystems by TTH on Nov 24 and is classified as "Substantial" (the portalspace equivalent of B-class). One wonders, which portal is of better quality, how was this determined, and how was this oversight not caught? — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 13:33, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Criteria are supposed to be uncontestable - almost all pages could be deleted under this criterion, according to consensus. Looking at the most recent 50 portals created by TTH, I see a lot of frivolous ones, but I also see Portal:Pumpkins, Portal:Woodpeckers, Portal:International trade, and Portal:World economy, all of which represent subjects with well-populated categories. And I could add at least as many that are debatable. If TTH, now under a topic ban, were to create more portals, they could be speedy deleted under WP:G4. But the pages considered here were created before the ban, so they should stand or fall on their own merits. RockMagnetist(talk) 06:05, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
    • @RockMagnetist: I think you mean WP:CSD#G5 (Creations by banned or blocked users) rather than WP:CSD#G4 (Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion). Thryduulf (talk) 14:49, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
      • WP:CSD#G5 cannot be used here. The locus of G5 revolves around obliterating the edits of LTA's and sockpupeters and for ban-evasion in a generalized scope. << FR (mobileUndo) 15:12, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
        • G5 can be used to delete pages created in violation of a topic ban, if deletion is the best course of action. I would never use G5 on a page that was a borderline violation, but that's not relevant here (I can't think of any page creation that would be anything other than clear-cut one way or the other). It's all theoretical though as TTH hasn't created any pages in violation of his ban and I think it unlikely they will. Thryduulf (talk) 15:37, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
        • @FR30799386 and Thryduulf: My point in mentioning G4 (oops - G5!) was that it is a more appropriate standard for deleting pages based on who created them. The current proposal is too broad. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:09, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I have gone over many of the portals. It seems that there are a mix of topics which are mainstream and some which should not have been created. This isn't a white or a black issue, the wheat must be carefully separated from the chaff. << FR (mobileUndo) 12:04, 18 March 2019 (UTC) !vote from sockpuppet struck. GoldenRing (talk) 10:17, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
  • FR, is there some issue with deleting them without prejudice to re-creating existing ones? These were basically made by a bot in what amounts to a single spasm, so deleting them all could be seen as a BRD reversion. The next step would be to let uninvolved editors recreate any worth keeping. Yes, that might take a while. There is no deadline and if some potentially useful portals have gone uncreated up til now, it's fine if they stay absent a little longer. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 04:07, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - the proposal assumes that none of the portals should have been created, and that is an incorrect assumption. Certainly the are some that perhaps should not exist, but equally there are some that definitely should, and some that need a bit of discussion to determine consensus. Speedy deletion is not the way to resolve this. WaggersTALK 16:45, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
    • No, the proposal assumes (correctly) that 95% should never have been created, and that the tiny amount of time spent on those few that might be worth keeping doesn't justify the hours needed to discuss them all at MfD. The ones that get speedy deleted and would be an acceptable portal anyway can easily be recreated if someone really wants them. No effort has gone into creating these portals (usually not even the effort of checking if the result was errorfree, never mind informative or not a duplicate of existing portals), so demanding a week-long discussion for all of them because sometimes the mindless effort created an acceptable result is putting the cart before the horse. Fram (talk) 08:28, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
    Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not a sensible solution. Also, given WP:PAPER, could you explain why the existence of these portals is such a problem? This is nothing more than a massive exercise in punishing a user for the crime of trying to improve the encyclopaedia and getting a bit overenthusiastic. It's horrible to see and I honestly thought the Wikipedia community was better than this. WaggersTALK 11:42, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
    The existence of these portals is a problem because they add extra clutter to already link-intensive articles (the lower part of our articles has become more and more overcrowded over the years, with authority links, navboxes, links to sister projects, ...) and removing links with no or very little value makes the articles better and avoids sending readers to utterly useless pages created in a completely mindless manner without oversight or care. Deleting pages which are useless is not "punishing a user", that is a WP:OWN approach you show there which should not be taken into consideration when debating whether to keep or delete pages. Punishing the user would be blocking or banning them. Fram (talk) 12:10, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
    And that is happening (or has happened) too, so my point very much stands. Describing an editor's good faith hard work as "useless" isn't exactly conducive to a civil discussion either. Certainly some of the portals created are worthy of deletion, others are worthy of being kept. I could support a new PROD criterion, but CSD is not the right tool for this job. WaggersTALK 12:51, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose—CSD is for stuff where there's zero grey area. At best, this should be a specialized PROD. Gaelan 💬✏️ 14:42, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Arbitrary break (CSD criterion X3)

  • Oppose Although the vast majority may not be needed: that does not mean they should just be deleted (without oversight or consensus). The arguments for this critera seem to be centered around: 'so little work was put into them, therefore we shouldn't need to put in any work to fix it'. Why not just let them sit there then? Is there a deadline? Seeing as portals themselves are an auxiliary aide to our main focus (of writing articles) this seems unnecessary. I'm surprised that this is (at least) the second time that a Private Bill has been proposed for the cSd, I guess times have changed a bit. It seems uncollegial to respond to opposers by saying: "then you better help out with all the MfD's'. I agree with the points made by SMcCandlish and RockMagnetist among others. Crazynas t 23:54, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
    • "Why not just let them sit there then"? Have you actually looked at the pure drivel many of these portals are? Most of these portals are not an "auxiliary aid", they are random shit, bot generated without bot permission but without actual human oversight. Sending any reader to such total shit is a disgrace. The below image is how one of these portals looks right now, after it has existed for 7 months and after this discussion highlighting many problems has run for a month. Time spent discussing these (time spent looking at these) is time wasted. Any portal which people think is necessary after all can be recreated (in a much better fashion) afterwards, the speedy deletion of these doesn't restrict this. But keeping the shit an editor mass produced because their may be some less shitty pages included is doing a disservice to the people who actually wander to these portals and can only stare in dsbelief at what we show them. "'Calamba, officially the ', (Tagalog: Lungsod ng Calamba), or known simply as Calamba City is a class of the Philippines in the province of , . According to the ?, it has a population of people. " Fram (talk) 09:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
have you looked at all the shit that sits in the mainspace (some of it for years)? There are like 182,000 unreferenced articles live right now, but this is the hill we're choosing to die on? Crazynas t 21:57, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Large in-line image
Typical example of the kind of portals spammed across enwiki. Not just the five errors, but also the actual "text" of the lead article...
Typical example of the kind of portals spammed across enwiki. Not just the five errors, but also the actual "text" of the lead article...
Thank you for identifying a problem with a small number of Philippines portals where the lead contains {{PH wikidata}}, a technique designed for use in infoboxes. I'll pass your helpful comments on to the relevant WikiProject. Certes (talk) 11:02, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
No, please pass my comment on to all people supporting these portals, but not bothering to actually look at what they propose or defend. Creating and supporting pages with such blatant problems is basically the same as vandalism. There are e.g. also quite a few portals which confront their readers with the below "selected article" (as the default selected article, not even when scrolling deeper). Or with the same image two or three times. Or... The list of problems with these portals is near endless (selected categories only consisting of one redlink? Sure...). The fact that adding a category can cause a page to look completely different and generate different errors (like in the example above) should be a major indicator that this system, used on thousands of pages, is not as foolproof and low in maintenance as is being claimed. Fram (talk) 11:36, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Large in-line image
Read more... and weep
Read more... and weep
Thank you for your continued help in identifying portal issues. I have found and fixed three pages which had repeated "Read more" links. If you could be kind enough to reveal which portal you have depicted as "PortalShit2.png", we may also be able to fix that case and any similar ones. Certes (talk) 12:20, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
There are two very simple solutions: either support X3, and all these portals are instantly fixed. Or actually take a look at all these low maintenance, automatic portals of the future, find the many issues, and fix them. Which still won't solve the problem that many of them are utterly pointless, mindless creations of course. I've noted more than enough problems with these portals to wholeheartedly support speedy deletion, since spending any time "corecting" a portal like the Calamba one is a waste of time (as it should be deleted anyway, speedy or not). Fram (talk) 12:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
@Fram: You are clearly not understanding the opposition to this proposal. It is not about supporting the inclusion of poor content, it is about opposing a speedy deletion criterion that fails the criteria for new and expanded criteria and would delete content that should not be deleted in addition to content that should. Thryduulf (talk) 13:41, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
No, I often have trouyble understanding burocratic opposition which creates tons of extra work for very little actual benefit. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that this actually fails the four criteria: it is objective and nonredundant (I guess we all agree on these two?), it is frequent (in the sense that having 3K portals at MfD is quite a heavy load, it's not just one or two pages), so we are left with "Uncontestable", which doesn't mean that as soon ass someone opposes it, it becomes contested, but that "almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus.". Looking at this discussion and the MfDs, I believe this to be true. Opposing this new CSD rule "because it is contested" is circular reasoning, as you are then basically saying "it is contested because it is contested", which is obviously not a valid argument. Having a significant number of portals which fall under the X3 but should not be deleted (which doesn't equal "should never exist", only "should not exist in the current form or any older form in the page history") would be a good argument, but I haven't seen any indication of such. Fram (talk) 13:57, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Frequent is not an issue (it wouldn't be as a permanent criteria, but as a temporary one it's fine), non-redundant is not an issue for most (although a few might be caught by P2 that's not a significant proportion so not a probelm). This proposal (unlike the ones being discussed at WT:CSD) is objective as written (created by a single user within a defined time period). Uncontestable however very much is, the requirement is "It must be the case that almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion. Remember that a rule may be used in a way you don't expect, unless you word it carefully." It is very clear from this discussion and others around these portals that not all of them should be deleted - several have received strong objections to deletion at MfD, some are argued to be kept and others merged. "it is contested because it is contested" is exactly the point of this requirement - nobody argues in good faith against deleting copyright violations, patent nonsense, recreations, or specific types of articles that don't assert importance. There is consensus that were these to be discussed they would be unanimously deleted every time. There is no such consensus about these portals. Some, perhaps most, should be deleted but not all of them. Thryduulf (talk) 15:47, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
I am pleased to report that a recent module change should eliminate the problem where articles too short to be worth featuring occasionally appear as "Read more... Read more...". This should fix the mystery portal depicted above next time it is purged. Certes (talk) 11:26, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
User:Thryduulf your opposition to X3 is baffling. You oppose it basically because some topics where Portals were mass created using automated tools against policy may warrant portals. But none of these pages have any original content to preserve. They are mindless spam poorly repackaging existing content. Kind of a poor Wikipedia mirror effort. MFDing these has proven they are unwelcome - yet you want to force us to spend a week debating pages that the creator spent seconds to create without even checking for compliance against their own criteria or for major errors? If these deletions were actually controversial (the only one of the 4 CSD criteria you say is not followed) we would expect a significant number of the MfDs to close Keep. We might expect the creator to defend and explain, but instead the creator freely admits he ignored WP:POG. Seriously makes me doubt your competence and judgement. Admins should show better judgement then this. Legacypac (talk) 17:12, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
@Legacypac: Assuming you mean X3, then I have explained every single one of my reasons several times and you have either not listened or not understood on every single one of those occasions so I Will not waste even more of my time explaining them again. Thryduulf (talk) 17:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Second Legacypac. Additionally, part of what I meant by "some might be worth keeping" is that they can be deleted, but if any were actually worthy they could be recreated, perhaps with more care and effort than this. SemiHypercube 17:19, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • It seems like a lot of what is objected to can be covered by a judicious use of P2, G1, and A3 (via P1) but there's probably something I'm missing. @Fram:, I'm not here to support bad content, but bad policy (and precedent) can be far more harmful to the project than 'repackaged nonsense' existing for a bit longer than some people want it to. This would have the side effect of saving the portals worth saving. Crazynas t 22:07, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose let's discuss deletion based on content and merit of individual portals. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water, this is not how we do things here. You're proposing deletion of many very good portals here. ɱ (talk) 15:41, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Please identify 35 out of the 3500 (1%) that are "very good portals" so we can run them through MFD to test your statement. Also there is no baby - there is no original content at all. No work done by humans is lost with X3 deletions because they were created using an automated script that was used without BAG approval to repackage existing content. Therefore WP:PRESERVE is not an issue. If someone started creating thousands of articles called "Foo lite" that just copied Foo mindlessly we would CSD them without debate. These are just in another mainspace but they are really Foo lite. Legacypac (talk) 17:12, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Except that's not comparable at all. The point of portals (which the community has repeatedly endorsed) is to duplicate article content and provide links to related content - which is exactly what these portals are doing. They might be doing it poorly in many cases, but that's qualitatively different to one article duplicating another. Thryduulf (talk) 18:10, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be faster to delete them all and then recreate the ones that need recreating, rather than go through them one by one to see which to keep? Because the number of "keeps" is like 5% or 10% and not 50%? (It would have to be 50% to be equal time between the two approaches.) If you're not convinced that it's 5-10% keep and not 50% keep, what sort of representative sampling process can we engage in to test the theory? Leviv ich 19:13, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Yes it would be faster, but there is no deadline so it is very significantly more important to get it right than it is to do it quickly. Deleting something that doesn't need deleting is one of the most harmful things that an administrator can do - and speedily deleting it is an order of magnitude more so. As only administrators can see pages once they have been deleted, and doing so is much harder, deleting it first makes the job of finding the good portals very significantly harder. Thryduulf (talk) 21:30, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Timing matters because this issue is being discussed in several forums at once. If the first debate to close decides to delete, the portals may be gone by the time another discussion reaches a consensus to keep them. Certes (talk) 21:48, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • CommentI listed The Transhumanist's portal creations, latest first, and examined the top entry on each page, i.e. every 100th portal.
Assessment of a sample of TTH's recent creations
  1. Portal:Polar exploration – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 50 excerpts with more links at the bottom. Four other images, plus plenty more in the 50 leads. Manual input: refining the search criteria for Did You Know and In the News (DYK+ITN).
  2. Portal:Nick Jr. – Lua error: No images found. (To be fair, there may have been images before a recently requested module change to suppress images without captions.) 13 excerpts. No manual input: the wikitext matches that generated by {{bpsp6}}.
  3. Portal:Alternative metal – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 11 excerpts; one other image. Manual input: refining DYK+ITN.
  4. Portal:Modulation – decent but minimal portal with no obvious errors. 30 excerpts; four other images. Several manual improvements.
  5. Portal:Spanish Civil War – potentially good portal but with a couple of display errors which look fixable. 30 excerpts; 20 other images. Manual input: routine maintenance, probably of a routine technical nature rather than creative.
  6. Portal:Carl Jung – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 40+ excerpts; six other images. Routine maintenance.
  7. Portal:Reba McEntire – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ other excerpts; six images. Routine maintenance.
  8. Portal:Romantic music – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 40+ excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance.
  9. Portal:Anton Chekhov – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 36 excerpts; 17 other images. Routine maintenance.
  10. Portal:Media manipulation – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; no image section. Routine maintenance.
  11. Portal:Desalination – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 15 excerpts; six other images. Manual input: refining DYK+ITN.
  12. Portal:Abuse – This portal has display errors which make it hard to evaluate properly. It's had plenty of manual input, possibly in attempts to fix it.
  13. Portal:Emmy Awards – decent appearance; one minor display error which looks fixable.(fixed) 50 excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance.
  14. Portal:Shanghai cuisine – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 19 excerpts; four other images. Routine maintenance.
  15. Portal:Saab Automobile – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 14 other images. Routine maintenance.
  16. Portal:High-speed rail – decent appearance; one minor display error which looks fixable.(fixed) 40+ excerpts; 30+ other images. Routine maintenance.
  17. Portal:Tetris – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 30+ excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance.
  18. Portal:Azores – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 20 excerpts; 18 other images. Some manual improvements.
  19. Portal:Musical instruments – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 40+ excerpts; 13 other images. Routine maintenance.
  20. Portal:Hidalgo (state) – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 11 excerpts; 16 other images. Routine maintenance.
  21. Portal:Sporting Kansas City – decent appearance; one minor display error which looks fixable;(fixed) narrow scope. 11 excerpts; 7 other images. Routine maintenance.
  22. Portal:Piciformes – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 9 excerpts; one other image. Routine maintenance.
  23. Portal:Birds-of-paradise – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 50 excerpts; five other images. Some manual improvements. Currently at MfD with the rationale that woodpeckers are not a family.
  24. Portal:Coffee production – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 11 other images. Routine maintenance.
  25. Portal:Albanian diaspora – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 30+ excerpts; three other images. Routine maintenance.
  26. Portal:University of Nebraska–Lincoln – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 18 excerpts; eight other images. Routine maintenance. Currently at MfD with the rationale that Portal:University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff contains only two articles.
  27. Portal:University of Gothenburg – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 10 excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance.
  28. Portal:Transformers – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; two other images (everything else is non-free). Some manual improvements.
  29. Portal:Boston Celtics – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 16 other images. Routine maintenance.
  30. Portal:Newbury Park, California – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 16 excerpts; 34 other images. Routine maintenance.
  31. Portal:Vanessa Williams – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 30+ excerpts; two other images. Routine maintenance.
  32. Portal:Bette Midler – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40 excerpts; seven other images. Routine maintenance.
  33. Portal:Ozzy Osbourne – generally decent appearance but several minor display errors;(fixed) narrow scope. 50 excerpts; 17 other images. Routine maintenance.
  34. Portal:Carnegie Mellon University – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 15 excerpts; 28 other images. Routine maintenance.
  35. Portal:Milwaukee – decent appearance; no obvious errors. 15 excerpts; 47 other images. Some manual improvements. Too few excerpts but potentially good.
  36. Portal:Billings, Montana – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. Four excerpts; 27 other images. Some manual improvements.
  37. Portal:Empire of Japan – decent appearance; no obvious errors but a narrow scope. 40+ excerpts; 20 other images but with a couple of repeats. Routine maintenance.
  38. Portal:Cheese – decent appearance; no obvious errors. Nine excerpts; 50+ other images. Extensive manual improvements. Too few excerpts but potentially good.
It appears that most of the portals have a narrow scope and should go but a significant minority are either already of a good enough standard to keep or show sufficient potential to merit further attention. This impression is based not on cherry-picking but on a random sample. Certes (talk) 21:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for this, this is a very good illustration of why this proposal is too broad - it will delete portals that clearly should not be deleted, and others that may or may not need to be deleted (e.g. I've !voted to merge several of the portals about universities). Thryduulf (talk) 21:58, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: You're missing my point. Just like we have a policy that banned users are to be reverted in all cases not because they might not make good edits (to game the system or not) but because they are a disruption to the community; so we should have a policy that pages created (or edited I suppose) by unauthorized bots are inherently not welcome, because of the potential for disruption regardless of their merit (by disruption I'm talking about this AN thread as much as the pages themselves). This is the whole reason we have a group dedicated to overseeing and helping with bots right? Crazynas t 22:12, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
No bots were involved. The pages were created using a template. One of your last page creations was a user talk page, where you welcomed a new editor using Twinkle. You did a very professional job, by applying a template which introduces the new editor with the sort of carefully considered and neatly arranged prose that we don't have time to write every time a new contributor appears. Using a template is not a valid rationale for mass deletions. Certes (talk) 22:22, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Curious, what template did you use? I guess the difference I see is the twinkle is highly curated and subject to extensive review (as are the templates it calls). If all these pages were manually created, then what happened in the example of (what to me looks pretty much like G1) that Fram posted above? Why didn't the human that pressed the button take responsibility for that (so to speak) pile of rubbish? To clarify, Bot here covers scripts, AWB (which is 'manual'), java implementations etc. In short: "Bot policy covers the operation of all bots and automated scripts used to provide automation of Wikipedia edits, whether completely automated, higher speed, or simply assisting human editors in their own work." The policy explicitly references mass page creation as being under the purview of BAG here. Crazynas t 22:39, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
I haven't used any of these templates myself but recent portals have been created by variants on {{Basic portal start page}}. The numbered versions such as {{bpsp6}} cater for portal-specific conditions such as there being no DYKs to feature. Certes (talk) 23:07, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
@Crazynas: I was simply answering your question about why we do not speedy delete every page created by an unauthorised bot, etc - simply because not every page created by such means should be deleted. You are also mistaken about banned users - they may be reverted but they are not required to be. Certes analysis shows that some of the portals created by the script have been improved since, sometimes significantly. Thryduulf (talk) 22:46, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: Sure, and this is tangential to the proposal here (which I'm still opposing, if you noticed). In any case the thought I'm having wouldn't be applied ex post facto but it would make it explicitly clear that mass creation of pages by automated or semi-automated means without prior approval is disruptive. Crazynas t 23:02, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment. The problem with many of these recently created template-based portals is that it is difficult or impossible to improve them. I've edited portals for over a decade but cannot work out how to change the portal code to include or exclude a particular article or image. (For articles I believe one has to change the template or mark the article as stub to exclude it; for images I believe it just harvests those from the main topic article.) Thus they are not drafts that could be further improved, they are static uneditable entities for which the only solution is to start from scratch. There is no thought to be preserved that is not equally present in the list of articles in the template/images in the root article. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:12, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • The key issue is that traditionally, portals are viewed as entry points to broad topic areas. However a page generated by the helper templates that draw content from an underlying navigation box is more akin to a second screen experience: it provides an X-ray view into the navigation box. It's not clear this is the experience the community wants to provide for readers visiting something labelled a portal. isaacl (talk) 20:47, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • the automated scripts are so easy to fool. Even if everything looks perfect when the portal is set up, as soon as someone adds an new link to a nav box (that may make sense in the nav box but not for the portal), adds an image to a page, or creates a DYK completely unrelated to the topic which includes the five letters "horse" within someone's name behind a pipe, you get random inappropriate stuff in an automated portal. The editor adjusting the nav box, adding a picture without a caption per WP:CAPTIONOBVIOUS or creating the DYK has no idea the portal is being busted. There is no edit to the portal to review so watch listing the portal does not help. You have to manually review the portal display regularly. That is before looking at lua errors. Autogenerated content is a bad idea. Forcing other editors to review your auto generated crap is wrong. Ignoring the guidelines because they are "outdated" and leaving 4500 pages that need to be checked and discussed against the guidelines by other editors is wrong. The only reasonable solution is to nuke these from orbit. Then if someone willing to follow the guidelines and use intellgently designed and applied tools want to recreate some titles, that is fine. Legacypac (talk) 21:23, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
    • Everything you say before "The only reasonable solution..." may be true but is irrelevant to this proposal as written. "Nuking them from orbit" is not the only reasonable solution, as fixing the issues so that the portals don't break is also reasonable. As is not deleting the ones that have been fixed so that the errors you talk about don't occur. Thryduulf (talk) 00:46, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

      Portal creation ... is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal.
      — Portal Update #29, 13 Feb 2019

      Someone spent less than 50 seconds creating the page; requiring editors to spend more time than that to delete it has an extortionate effect, even though there's a good faith intent. If we don't nuke from orbit, then those who want these automatically-created portals deleted will be forced to spend far, far more than 50 seconds per portal discussing them one by one (or ten by ten, or one hundred by one hundred, it'll still be a lot of time). 50 seconds "taken up by manual activities" is how we end up with a Portal:Sexual fetishism that includes Pedophilia as one of the selected articles–probably not the best selection–but that's been there for five months now. Leviv ich 03:04, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
      • Two wrongs do not make a right and there is no deadline. The only reason for deleting them all you seem to have is that you don't like that these portals were created so quickly, and that some of them are bad. That's fine, you are entitled to your opinion and some of them are bad. However that does not equate to a reason to delete all of them without checking whether they are good or bad. If you have problems with specific portals then they should be fixed and/or nominated for deletion, as I see you have done in this case, but just because X is bad doesn't mean that the entire set of pages of which is a part should be speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 09:35, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
        • "There is no deadline" is a complete non-argument. There is no deadline to have these portals either. Knowingly advocating for keeping problematic portals around until someone not only notices it but also decides to MfD it is exposing readers to shitty, thoughtless reproductions of content for no actual benefit (the benefits" of these portals are addressed dequately by the navigation templates they are based on) and with the risk of showing them all kinds of errors which gives a very poor impression. Luckily very few people get actually exposed to these pages, but this also means that the very hypothetical damage deleting some of these pages would do is extremely minimal. Fram (talk) 10:09, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
          • There was indeed no deadline for their creation, now they have been created that is irrelevant. If we follow your logic though we should delete every article and then just recreate the ones that admins vet as meeting an undefined standard. Yes, deleting more slowly does increase the risk that some readers will see errors, but thtat's exactly what happens in every other namespace without a problem. Thryduulf (talk) 16:35, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
            • No, that's not my logic. Your use of "no deadline" when it suits you, and the dismissal when it doesn't, is quite clear though. Deleting articles is losing content, deleting these auto-portals is losing nothing. Furthermore, we have in the past speedy deleted large groups of articles by one or two creators once it became clear that too many contained errors. This has been done with thousands of articles by Dr. Blofeld, with thousands by Jaguar, and with thousands by Sander v. Ginkel (the last ones moved to draft and then deleted afterwards). Once we know that with one group of creations by one editor, there are many problems, we had no qualms in the past to speedy delete them. That didn't mean that they can't be recreated, or that admins will first vet them, no idea where you get those ideas. Please don't make a caricature of what I support here, and please don't make absolute statements which don't match reality. Fram (talk) 17:41, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose 1) Let's not create precedents where we hand single admins editorial control, admins may well be great editors (some better than others), but let's keep editorial control as much as possible only with all editors. 2) The formulation of this supposed CSD criteria seems to be a WP:PUNISH against a single user. (As an aside, different perspective: there are perhaps millions of pages in article space that are "poor", so portal space is bound to have them, too - just work through it -- and if we come-up with new forward looking policies and guidelines for all portals (or mass creations) consistent as possible with the 5 P, all the better). Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:42, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support - per Fish & Karate. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:08, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I feel there are much better ways of handling the situation, including but not limited to: expanding P2, Portal PROD, and even MFD. This is too broad of a sword that doesn't even cut in the right places since it's only limited to one user in a given time frame. -- Tavix (talk) 16:15, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Thought I had voted here but I guess I hadn’t. Regardless, my thinking on this has changed because of Certes’ in-depth analysis of TTH’s portal creations. Anyway: Oppose. The mass creation of portals is something that should be dealt with preferably quickly, but this proposal as written is not the right way to do it. Sure, there are a lot of crappy portals that could be deleted fairly uncontroversially, but there are also a lot of good portals as well as edge cases that deserve more community discussion on whether they should be deleted, or at least a longer waiting period so users may object. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 12:40, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose for now. I still hope that the proposal might become limited to portals looked at and determined to be poor by some objective criteria, which I could support, but that hasn't yet happened. Speedy ad hominem deletion regardless of subsequent tuning, current quality or even potential for future improvement is likely to throw too many babies out with the bathwater. Certes (talk) 12:46, 29 March 2019 (UTC) Duplicate !vote stricken. GoldenRing (talk) 10:14, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Regretfully support: as an editor I dislike the idea of creations made by certain users being deleted en masse but, quite frankly, MfD cannot cope with the influx at the moment. Hell, I've got a decent laptop and MfD is getting so big scrolling down causes a bit of lag. SITH (talk) 20:57, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Strong support of something to this effect, per WP:MASSCREATION and WP:TNT (i.e., the babies thrown out with the bathwater can be recovered later). However, opponents raise good points of localizing control to a few members, and while I do argue that portals are not content, they are a navigational tool, so community control of them can be a bit "stricter" than mainspace articles, perhaps something like PROD would be better. Regardless of how this pans out, for future portals going forward I proposed Portals for Creation at RfC, and created a mockup here if anyone wants a look. — Preceding unsigned comment added by John M Wolfson (talk • contribs)
    Why is requiring administrators to comb through deleted portals to find those that should not have been deleted in order to restore them, having inconvenienced those people who use the portals in the mean time, in any way better for the project than deleting only those that need to be deleted? Thryduulf (talk) 07:34, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. Worthless pages which take 12 seconds to create shouldn't take more than 50000 times that for multiple users to delete. If a subject WikiProject or person interested in the portal's subject is willing to "adopt" that portal, or even assert that the portal is not useless, a more nuanced consideration may apply. And, I should point out, some of the individual deletions are incomplete, as user-facing pages (mostly categories and navigation templates, but some actual article pages) still point to the deleted portals. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:25, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Speedy deletion of modules

Hi. There have been a number of times when I've tried to tag modules for deletion. The tag goes on the doc page, and doc page gets deleted, but the actual module isn't. Can an admin please delete Module:User:Xinbenlv bot/msg/inconsistent birthday per WP:CSD#G7. Separately, is there a better way to communicate to admins that, despite the tag being on the documentation page, the module itself is the target of the deletion request? --DannyS712 (talk) 00:59, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

You can use a custom rationale on most tags. --Izno (talk) 13:36, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
Ask a friendly admin directly - preferably one who works in module space, so they know how to verify it's not being used. Failing that, to make it clear you're not talking about the doc page itself, you can either enclose the speedy deletion template in <includeonly> tags, or manually categorize it into Category:Candidates for speedy deletion with some explanatory text. —Cryptic 00:38, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
@Cryptic: okay, thanks --DannyS712 (talk) 00:51, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

G6 for post-merge delete?

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.
Proposal withdrawn Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:51, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

The Twinkle CSD menu includes G6 for An admin has closed a deletion discussion ... as "delete" but they didn't actually delete the page, but this isn't listed as a use case under WP:G6. I propose adding another bullet point:

  • Deleting a page per an XfD close which specified deletion but didn't perform it.

Any objections? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:58, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

PS, see this discussion for background. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:00, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
That's already in there; fourth bullet point in the "templates" section of G6:

* {{Db-xfd|fullvotepage=link to closed deletion discussion}} - For pages where a consensus to delete has been previously reached via deletion discussion, but which were not deleted.

It's also in the main section, though I do suppose it says ... as the result of a consensus at WP:TfD. I suppose this could be modified to just read "XfD". Primefac (talk) 20:56, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
I believe that's because non-admins can close TfDs as delete, but not other XfDs. ansh666 22:28, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
The particular case here (as described in the discussion on my talk page), was I closed an AfD as (essentially), Merge, then delete. As is common in merge closes, I left the actual merge for somebody else to execute. In this case, the merge was done by Nthep, who is an admin and was able to delete the page after they were done merging. They used WP:G6 as the reason. But, in theory, the merge could have been done by a non-admin, and then tagging the page for G6 deletion would have made sense.
"Merge and delete" is almost never a valid outcome, since attribution is needed for a merge. ansh666 17:58, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
In general, I agree with you. It almost always makes sense to "Merge and redirect". In fact, I think it made sense to do that in this case too, but as the closing admin, my job is to summarize the discussion, not cast a supervote. So, let's for the moment, assume we have a valid "Merge and delete" outcome. What's the best way to implement that? -- RoySmith (talk) 23:54, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
Move the history to another existing redirect that doesn't have history that needs preserving. There's some alternatives at WP:Merge and delete. —Cryptic 00:17, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Lazy catchall. If the deletion is authorised by an XfD, use “deleted per [the XfD]”, not per G6. G6 should never be used for pages with a nontrivial history, and G6 post merge sounds like a terrible violation of that. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:00, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
Fix twinkle. Twinkle documentation errors should be fixed, not policy altered to suit twinkle documentation. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:02, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Two things. First, the list under G6 isn't exclusive, i.e. those are not the only reasons that G6 may be used. Tagging a page under G6 where the XfD for that page was closed as delete is fairly obviously "uncontroversial maintenance", so there isn't a need to add a bullet point. Second, tagging a page as G6 for an AfD result of merge - even if the nominator recommends deletion post-merge, which should frankly never be done for attribution reasons - would no longer be uncontroversial by default, and therefore shouldn't be done. ansh666 22:24, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm with SmokeyJoe. If you're deleting something because of a deletion discussion, that deletion discussion is tautologically the reason for deletion. It's not a speedy deletion, and shouldn't be labelled as one. It especially shouldn't be labelled as a G6, which is intended for cases where there's both no non-temporary loss of content, and no controversy whatsoever. (Before someone brings it up, for G4, you're speedying it because of similarity to previously-deleted content, not directly because of the previous deletion discussion.) —Cryptic 00:17, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm with SmokeyJoe and Cryptic. In addition G6 is already the most convoluted and most misused speedy deletion criterion, we should not be adding more things to it, especially something that will encourage inappropriate merge and deletes. Thryduulf (talk) 08:45, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
  • It's clear this isn't going anywhere, so I withdraw my proposal. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:25, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should a 4th CSD for unused templates be added?

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Clear opposition to this proposal. Given how many times this proposal (and similar variations) have been proposed, there is a moratorium on further discussions. Note that this moratorium does not extend to any potential changes to "non-speedy" proposals (i.e. some sort of "template PROD"), just those that would created a quick-delete situation for nominated templates. Primefac (talk) 18:56, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Should a new CSD criteria (T4T5) be added for unused templates that meet the following criteria:

  • Template is not used anywhere, I.E. has zero transclusions excluding templates own documentation of course.
  • Template is NOT a substitute only template. Should go without saying but templates that are substitute only by definition should never have transclusions, doesn't mean the template can been speedily deleted.
  • Template is older than 6 months. No speedily deleting a new template that hasn't been used just yet.
  • Template is NOT a sometimes unused/temporary template. An example of this would be {{help me}} which may have 0 transclusions at any given moment.

Please discuss. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 18:41, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Such activity is a possible behavioural issue rather than a reason to not have a CSD for non-controversal cases. Anyway if someone changes a handful of templates A to template B and the gets rid of template B where is the problem? Legacypac (talk) 15:23, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The fact that a template is unused is never by itself a reason to delete it, it's only relevant as a criterion by which to select a potentially unneeded template for further inspection at TfD (see also this brief essay). An evaluation of use, or the potential for use, of a template requires knowledge of its context, the function that it serves and the existence of related or similar templates. All this calls for judgement that is above and beyond what goes into dealing with the obvious, clear-cut scenarios that the CSD criteria are there for. A template can be "unused" for a wide variety of reasons. Maybe it's a useful template that nobody happens to know about, in which case it needs not to be deleted, but popularised and integrated into the project documentation. Maybe it's a template that is meant to be used only temporarily, for example until certain issues on a given page have been addressed (niche maintenance templates). It may be a currently unused element of a wider system that somebody might soon need (happens sometimes within the lang-xx family of templates). It may be unused because it was removed in error from the one page where it's meant to be used and nobody has noticed yet. It may be unused because the editor who tagged it for deletion has just removed all of its transclusions. It may be unused at the moment, but its existence may be assumed or required by some other piece of machinery (like a module) in a way that doesn't show up in its list of transclusions. A template may be unused, but it could hold the history of a fragment of article text that has at some point been merged into the article, and hence the template is there to preserve attribution. A template may appear as unused because it's meant to be substed; yes, such a template should be exempt from the proposed CSD, but how do you determine if a template's meant to be substed? (It doesn't always say so in the documentation; I remember there have been TfD discussions where several editors had voted to delete such an "unused" template until someone noticed it was a user warning template and so is always substed.)
    I don't think any one editor is attuned to all these possibilities, and that's why such things are better decided by discussion involving several participants. However, TfD does indeed occasionally feel like it's getting flooded with similar nominations, so something probably ought to be done about that. If new speedy deletion criteria are going to be part of the solution, then they should be about easy, clearly-defined subsets of templates; there could, for example, be a CSD criterion for unused navboxes that fail WP:NAVBOX. – Uanfala (talk) 03:08, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. This helps make editing an easier experience by simplifying the set of available templates. The amount of verbiage and time wasted on discussing (but rarely if ever actually using) potential uses of these templates is vast. A template exists to serve the encyclopedia in some way (helping editing or reading) and if it's not used, in the caveats above, it should be deleted.--Tom (LT) (talk) 07:26, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose, unused templates can hold interesting history that needs preserving. Also, deleting templates that have been widely used destroys old revisions of articles. And per Uanfala. —Kusma (t·c) 07:45, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
    "this destroys old revisions" is not an argument that TfD seems to be accepting: Template:Persondata was deleted. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 18:13, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
    Yeah, that argument is a flawed argument from its root, as the whole deletion process of TfD destroys old revisions all the time. --Gonnym (talk) 20:45, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
    It is sometimes relevant. For Persondata, old revisions just have a redlinked template at the bottom. That is not a problem. Deleting templates used within the text (convert-like ones) is a much more serious problem. —Kusma (t·c) 17:33, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Uanfala and Kusma. I'm generally not opposed to cleanup but the above-mentioned risks are clearly higher than the potential benefits. Regards SoWhy 08:15, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I've supported and even proposed the ability to PROD unused templates, since it takes a step out of the deletion process but allows users seven days to oppose and potentially discuss its deletion and use. Speedy deletion offers none of that. Nihlus 09:06, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Some unused templates, such as {{Roads legend}} and {{Trillium Line route diagram detailed}}, are nevertheless permanently stored in template space, and they may be linked to Wikidata items which are structurally useful. I would support if there were a provision for certain templates – such as templates explicitly marked as historical, templates with incoming links from articles, template sandboxes, templates for which T5 has previously been declined, and templates which have been otherwise marked as ineligible for T5 – to be ineligible for T5 deletion. Jc86035 (talk) 10:07, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. While I think the basic idea is good, there are too many nuances and exceptions to the point where I believe a CSD to be untenable. I think the proper solution is to expand PROD to templates so the distinction becomes potentially controversial vs. uncontroversial, and I would support such a proposal. -- Tavix (talk) 15:00, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
    I was thinking I'd like to see template prod as well, but that's a discussion for a different page. --Izno (talk) 15:22, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
    No, that was not a template PROD but another CSD proposal disguised as a "PROD". A template PROD would be simply expanding WP:PROD to include (unused) templates. If you read that discussion, I had opposed that proposal for that very reason. -- Tavix (talk) 16:21, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
    Either way, this isn't the page for it, was the point I was making. --Izno (talk) 16:47, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per the above opposers and the many previous discussions where a CSD criterion for unused templates has been rejected. Not all templates need to be used at all times (e.g. {{help me}} may be unused at any given moment), not all subst-only templates are marked as such, some templates should be kept so as not to break old revisions, etc, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 15:27, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
    C1 exists despite the fact that Category:Wikipedians looking for help may be empty at any given moment. Why can't T5 be implemented in the same way? {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 18:20, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per those above who have already highlighted many situations in which a template with zero transclusions should be kept anyway, i.e. there are good reasons why zero transclusion templates should not be deleted without prior discussion. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:25, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment @Thryduulf: and a few others have made a very valid point that there are some templates that at any given moment may have no transclusions ({{help me}} for example). Pppery raised a good counter argument about C1 accounting for sometimes empty categories. This is why we have {{Empty category}}. With that in mind, I 100% agree that something would be needed to document that some templates may have zero transclusions at any given moment. I'm curious those who have objected based on this point alone, if we were able to account for this case would you be more supportive of this? I have added a new criteria to the top of this RFC to account for that case. It would seem to me that it would be pretty easy to add some documentation to the new CSD criteria that exempts templates that may at any given moment have no transclusions.
Additionally, I'm curious if there are additional conditions that would cause some of you to be more supportive of the idea? For example, if we said that the template must be at least 1 year old instead of just 6 months? Thryduulf thank you for raising that point, it wasn't something I had considered and definitely needs to be accounted for. A reminder, the goal of this CSD criteria is to expedite the process of deleting old unused templates that have been sitting around for a long time and are unused. It is not my intention to facilitate a method for gaming the system and quickly nuking templates someone just doesn't like. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:08, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
@Redrose64, SoWhy, Jc86035, Thryduulf, and Ivanvector: please see above comment. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:08, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
My opposition to this criteria is based on far more than just on that one point, and still stands. For example the older a template is the higher the chance of breaking old revisions. If a template has been around for a year without causing problems then I'm not seeing any reason why deletion of it needs expediting. Thryduulf (talk) 20:18, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
Regarding your question about an {{Empty category}} equivalent for templates, {{Subst only}} will account for most of the templates that have no transclusions, with the caveat that some templates use {{Substitution}}, which allows a custom message, and thus requires examination to determine whether the jist is that it's a template that must be substituted. --Bsherr (talk) 20:28, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
Still a no for me, the temporarily-unused template (like {{help me}}) is just one of the issues raised. I'm actually more concerned about borked page histories that rely on templates that are later deprecated. I'm not against deleting unused templates, I'm only opposed to doing it without having a discussion to consider all the angles first. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:36, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Alas, this has been proposed, many, many, many, many times. The iterations sometimes vary, such as just for user namespace templates, or just for those "not encyclopedic", with varying waiting periods or age requirements. Just some of these discussions are: /Archive 72#Proposed tweak to T3, /Archive 10#Orphaned templates, /Archive 67#New criterion - T4, aka Template PROD, /Archive 44#New CSD - T4 Unused userbox that is more than 30 days old, /Archive 42#T4: Unused template, /Archive_52#Deprecated_templates, /Archive 22#Speedy deletion of unused templates?, /Archive 59#Gauging opinion on a possible new criterion for templates. There have also been several proposals at WT:PROD for this (reportedly four in 2007 alone). There seem to be three reasons this has never been adopted. Firstly, as pointed out by Tazerdadog, templates that are intended to be substituted have no transclusions by design, and a summary process like CSD is not efficient to distinguish those not transcluded by design from those by circumstance. Secondly, CSD is generally for urgent deletions and, although TfD is busy, it is not backlogged enough (with deserved thanks to Galobtter (above), Primefac and others) to warrant the use of a summary process like this, particularly since an unused template is not an urgent cause for deletion. Thirdly, that a template is unused is not, in any guideline, a dispositive reason to delete it; rather, it is just a relevant consideration; therefore, it would be egregious to make it a dispositive reason to speedily delete it before there is consensus on whether this should be decisive for a deletion discussion.

--Bsherr (talk) 20:19, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
I want to echo what Tavix said, because he hit it on the head. CSD should be quick and straightforward — the least amount of judgment or gray area required, the better. This proposal would require users to:
  1. Ensure the template isn't substituted
  2. Ensure it's older than 180 days
  3. Check that it has no transclusions
  4. Check if any redirects have transclusions or history that might have been merged there
  5. Somehow know whether this template may have been used occasionally but not right now even though it's not substituted(???)
  6. Know whether any of its redirects may have also been used occasionally but not right now
That's nowhere near tenable for a SD criterion. A TPROD process might work, but this is too complicated for speedy deletion. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:39, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
As usual, I'm with Amory. Too many criteria for a CSD, any questionable template should be sent to Tfd. Liz Read! Talk! 04:22, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment/Question: How many templates fit the proposed criteria today? Are we talking about 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, or more? An order of magnitude (backed up by a reasonable method of arriving at that number) would be helpful in this discussion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:23, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
    • As a first approximation, there's 90684 non-redirect pages in the template namespace that currently aren't transcluded from any other page that were created before 2018-06-27 (quarry:query/33701). So something less than that - the count includes subst-only templates, and template sandboxes, and template documentation pages, and so on. —Cryptic 23:16, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
    • Excluding pages with names ending in "/sandbox", "/testcases", or "/doc" brings the total down to 83752. Further excluding templates that themselves transclude {{require subst}} and/or {{subst only}} brings it down to 82204. Even supposing that many subst-only templates aren't documented as subst-only, there's only 518284 total non-redirect pages in the Template namespace. —Cryptic 19:15, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
      • Interesting. I wonder why Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused templates shows only about 13,446 templates before it starts to list redirects (and why would it list redirects, which are cheap?). It seems that a better set of queries is needed, perhaps one or two that implement some of the criteria listed at the top of this section. That might allow people who want to take templates to TFD (or label them as subst-only) to have an easier time of it, allowing all of us (or most of us, at least) to achieve our goals. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:59, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
  • I find the deletion of templates very annoying when reviewing old page revisions where they were used. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:27, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'll give a current real example to illustrate why I disagree with this proposal. At Template talk:URL #Infobox input may vary, same output preferred, there was a request for code that "accepts all input forms, then reformats it as needed into good {{URL}}". Eventually we've arrived at updated functionality in Module:URL and a new template called Template:URL2 that's much more user-friendly in infoboxes than Template:URL. Take a look at the comparison between the outputs and judge for yourselves whether {{URL2}} has potential, especially as it doesn't throw an error in an infobox that uses Wikidata (which may provide blank input to the template). But {{URL2}} is not used in article space at present, so unless somebody uses it in the next x days, it would be deleted under this criterion. What value does that add to the encyclopedia? What happened to WP:TIND? Why would I spend time creating potentially useful code if I knew there was a deadline imposed for somebody to use it? If potentially useful code keeps being deleted, what will you do when editors asks for new functionality but all the coders are too fed up with having their work deleted to bother with it? --RexxS (talk) 23:50, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

  • Oppose - no matter how many ways these proposals are dressed, I will stubbornly oppose; unused will never be a synonym for unusable (a criterion I would support) and it will never mean its condition is final, and so absolute that every potential for use in the future is also precluded (only its deletion can accomplish that). And, so too is it fact that a template's deletion, after discussion at TfD, does not remotely suggest that discussion itself is not beneficial, or even necessary.

    In closing, I'd like to say: I find the proximal nearness of this discussion to its most recent counterpart more than a little disturbing. I hope when it closes, its proponents will accept the consensus achieved (or lack thereof) respect the mandate in its remit, and stifle the inclination to be heard again. These matters are settled, their questions have been thoroughly answered, and enough has been vested already. Moving on is the only course to follow from here, please follow that course!--John Cline (talk) 04:08, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

  • Oppose. Mere disuse is a bad reason to delete a template, if for no other reason than per SmokeyJoe and Cryptic. If they're not problematic, keep them, since otherwise you're damaging old revisions for no good reason. Also, per Cryptic's stats, this would involve a very large number of pages, even after you skip the ones that are always supposed to be substituted, the new creations, and the temporary ones. We shouldn't declare such a large number of pages currently speedy-deletable, except after a big community discussion on whether such deletions are appropriate. Look at the way G13 was originally handled; it was much bigger than merely a conversation here. Unless they come out of a big discussion, the only way we should create new speedy criteria is if they cover a class of pages that is rare at the moment because the pages are constantly getting deleted at XFD already. Nyttend (talk) 04:27, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment (additional to oppose above). Zackmann08 has recently TFD'd hundreds of unused templates. The results seem to indicate to me that, while many are deleted unopposed, clearly not all are deleted, and the deletions are clearly not uncontroversial. So CSD for them is clearly wrong. —Kusma (t·c) 17:33, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose for similar reasons as in this recent MfD of unused templates: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Unused userbox template. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:16, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose: There are enough corner cases that this could be dangerous. What about templates that are uses as preloads only (which aren't subst only, yet have zero transclusions)? What about templates that aren't technically subst only, but which don't have any hidden comment for tracking and have so far only been substed? How would criteria 4 be objectively judged, as any template could be defined as "sometimes unused"? As we've seen at TfD recently, figuring out whether or not a template is actually used is often not srtaightforward enough to be considered as a CSD. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 14:05, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose: The old discussion already showed problems, it shouldn't have been simply reproposed after that short a time without addressing the issues raised before. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 14:38, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose especially per Kusma and others. Deleting templates makes older revisions extremely difficult to read. Guettarda (talk) 15:02, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • 'Comment note that Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Unused userbox template (and MfD for 250 unusued userbox templates) was closed as "keep", Template:Pollachi–Dindigul branch line, Template:Railway stations in the Borough of Scarborough and Template:Railway stations in Nottinghamshire were both brought to TfD as unused but rather than being deleted the templates were used. Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 March 2#Template:Trillium Line route diagram detailed is still open but is likely heading for a keep or no consensus close after being relisted - debate is about whether a template that is linked from article space is "unused". These show that "unused templates" fail the "uncontestable" and "objective" requirements for new criteria. Thryduulf (talk) 10:50, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Uanfala covered what I was going to. I also agree this is basically forum-shopping since we just went over this in December.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:53, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Please do not archive this until it has been formally closed (I've requested this at WP:ANRFC) so that there is a clear record of consensus about this going forward. Thryduulf (talk) 19:20, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose The criteria are too complex to be determined in a speedy manner. Many taggers will make mistakes, and for deleters it takes too long to check, and may not even be possible to tell, so they are sure to be deleted in error if this gets up. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:45, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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