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G7 question

I'm seeing a lot of borderline G7's, particularly when we're talking about a new editor who blanks the page (and so may or may not actually want the page deleted). Maria Aloisa Wratislaw von Mitrowitz had 5 editors and 2 bot edits before it was tagged; the edits other than from the page creator were in the nature of copyediting and adding links and categories. At what point do minor edits stop a G7? - Dank (push to talk) 16:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Well if they have been marked as minor then I'd say almost never. As for the general question of whether subsequent edits dilute authorship to the point of overriding G7 by the original author, its a judgement call. Sourced data and major rewrites are one thing, vandalism and vandal reversion, bot edits and general gnomish stuff another. There are probably 10,000 articles where I have fixed a link or typo, added a category or rolled back vandalism. I don't expect to be consulted if one of them is speedy deleted, and judging from my deleted contributions a fair bit of that does happen. ϢereSpielChequers 16:20, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd say G7 stops when another editor than the creator has worked on the article in any way that improved it (e.g. not tagging, vandalism reverting, category adding etc.). Personally, I would also exclude any page from G7 that had any other editors and that exists for a few months. Regards SoWhy 16:31, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Does changing "They married and move to nowadays Slovenia, where she gave to birth many kids in many castles, wich they posesed in that time." to "They married and move to what is now Slovenia, where she gave to birth many children in many castles." rule out G7? - Dank (push to talk) 17:53, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
No, as those changes were just a copy-edit. Nothing substantial was changed/added/removed. If the original author blanks, G7 applies. Singularity42 (talk) 17:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
On the other hand changing "They married and move to nowadays Slovenia, where she gave to birth many kids in many castles, wich they posesed in that time." to "They married and move to what is now Slovenia, where she gave to birth many children in many castles. She is a famous movie star there." rules out G7 since the copy-editing included adding new information. Regards SoWhy 20:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 21:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Hiya, I created the stub Trollkarlen a few years ago. Someone else put a prod tag on it today, I agreed, and tagged the article myself for {{db-author}} since no one else had worked on it (aside from minor template tweaks). Yet my speedy was declined?? This seems kind of bizarre, especially for a brief stub like that. If it has to go through prod, okay I guess, but this seems like an unnecessary delay. --Elonka 02:29, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Calling this a substantial change is just nonsensical. —Korath (Talk) 03:27, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

←I got the same question on my talk page and responded there. - Dank (push to talk) 04:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:MADEUP, WP:NEO

Sorry if this is a perennial suggestion. I regularly prod patrol and I see a category of prods that are such slamdunk deletions that I think WP:CSD should be able to deal with them. These are the blatant "made up one day" ideas or neologisms, often admitted by the article creator to be such and invariably unsourced. For instance "Clorange is a word that means an all natural substance. It's a fairly new word and there is not much that the public knows about it." There's no chance at all that this could be suitable for an encyclopedia. Could there be a criteria for obvious new coinages and madeup ideas or inventions? Fences&Windows 21:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

  • I would give this a weak support if limited as mentioned: i.e. the author admits it was made up and most of the public does not know about it. the author admits it was made up and/or the author admits that most of the public does not know about it. If it appears to a non-notable neologisim, or something made up one day, but it is not explicitly stated, then it should go through the normal deletion route. I have to admit, this is one of the most common prod messages I tag new articles with, and in many cases the author has already admited that nobody has heard of it yet. This would not fall under A7, since A7 doesn't support neologisms, games, fads, etc. Singularity42 (talk) 21:17, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
  • It is a perennial suggestion and has historically been rejected because one can't reliably tell just by looking at a word if it represents a notable concept or not. (And being only a DICTDEF is expressly not a reason for speedy deletion.) The classic counter-example is some newly invented scientific term that virtually no one will have heard of, but may very well be a notable concept none-the-less. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

This has been suggested countless times, the last time was in August 2009. I doubt there will be a change in consensus for the same reasons as before. Sometimes G3 can be applied as well. Regards SoWhy 21:33, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Even when the author says "I just made this up"? Those articles are always deleted. It just seems an incredible waste of time to have these potentially go to AfD when there is no question of them not being deleted. If an article stands no chance at all of remaining in Wikipedia, speedy deletion is surely the best option. I'm not proposing that anything the tagger thinks is a neologism should be deleted. Fences&Windows 23:18, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Thee are not enough such articles to warrant a criterion. Such articles take very little time at AfD. In cases of a totally ridiculous insertion of an article , there is always G3 or G2. ` DGG ( talk ) 01:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Disagreed. I encounter plenty of WP:MADEUP topics at PROD. There's enough to make a CSD criterion for, but consensus on wording/possible overuse by NPPers is another question. JamieS93 02:09, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I think this is somewhat like an extension of A7. I think we'd really be better off to extend A7 to "An article which does not make any assertion of importance or significance of its subject", and not limit it by type. We're long past the days where the major floods of garbage were mom and pop shops, garage bands, and high school autobiographies. We get those types of articles on all kinds of stuff now. Technically, you couldn't A7 it if I wrote an article on my cat. I wouldn't hesitate to anyway in a case like that, of course, and I very rarely see such things challenged when they're done anyway. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Totally off-topic, but A7 actually does cover your cat (it covers individual animals). Singularity42 (talk) 02:27, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
You are correct, I didn't see the expansion there. Still, it doesn't technically cover my non-notable theory, neologism, book, product, etc., etc., etc., and it should. An article should answer the most basic question there is for a reader, "Why should I care?" Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:32, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Actually I'm pretty sure we had a rfc on this issue a while back, in diluted form, as it is now. There are loads of made up one day articles that burn plenty of electrons over at AfD. Don't let the regular disuaded you. Those articles waste plenty of time at AfD. Shadowjams (talk) 12:37, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
The problem with WP:MADEUP is that quite often articles that look as if they cover something someone made up actually cover a legitimate topic. The subset of articles where the creator admits that it's both madeup and certainly not legitimate for inclusion is quite small in my experience and only those articles should be covered by a SD criterion. We could consider adding it as "a page describing a concept, theory, idea or neologism which clearly was made up by the page's creator" (maybe as a part of G11 because people want to use Wikipedia to spread their invention). The problem is to avoid any wording that allows deletion of things that just sound madeup (take exploding whale for example). Regards SoWhy 12:58, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
If I remember right (correct me if I'm wrong) you were opposed to the proposal for the made up one day CSD category. Shadowjams (talk) 13:04, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
By the way, the previous vote referenced above was 17:9 against the procedure you're advocating. And while I don't think that means we need to switch up, I want there to be some perspective in this. Particularly since the people interested in CSD monitor this forum. The wider community, who knows. 13:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC) Shadowjams (talk) 13:16, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I am opposed to a general "made up" CSD category, correct, since a single admin cannot decide whether something is made up or not. I do think however that the limited subset of those articles, i.e. those where the creator admits that they are using Wikipedia to spread something they just made up, can be a valid SD criterion if such a criterion satisfies the other requirements, especially the "frequent" one, which I don't think it would. Regards SoWhy 14:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

So Why's suggestion is essentially the same position that Fences and windows and I have taken on this thread: a narrow subset of article where the author admits in the article that it is made up. This does not fall under A7 (since the scope of the subjects are larger than A7), it does not fall under G1 (since the article is not gibberish), it does not fall under G2 (because it was not a test - the author clearly intended it to be a permanent namespace article), and it does not fall under G3 (since everything written is true, including the fact that it was made up). We're PROD-ing a lot of these articles, and when the PROD is declined by the author with no reasons, or reasons that aren't useful (i.e. "I know it is made up, but this Wikipedia article will help promote the subject") turns into a waste of an AfD, usually with a snowball delete. There is a need for it, it doesn't fall under other speedy criteria, and the limited subset removes the need to make a subjective determination or the risk of deleting an article that is notable - it is an article that admits it is made up. Singularity42 (talk) 15:04, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

In scenarios like the one you're describing, where things don't technically meet a speedy criterion but it's indisputably (or admittedly) unsalvageable garbage, there's still a criterion for that, and a rationale behind it. We don't disallow obviously correct actions because Form 113-151 Subpart A was not filled out in triplicate. Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
True, but if administrators are regularly invoking IAR with a consistent line of reasoning, it only makes sense to put that into policy. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:34, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the problem. PRODs are supposed to be slam-dunk decisions as well, and these prods are hardly ever declined (if they are, rapid snow at AFD ensues). Is there a sense that this sort of prod is being regularly contested and/or causing excess traffic at AFD among people who follow such things? My attendance at AFD is sporadic, but I haven't seen any sign of a major problem. If there isn't one, I don't like to add new cases to CSD w/o need, that being a variant on instruction creep. RayTalk 01:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

a2

i have never understood the rationale for a2. Shouldn't we be translating the articles, not removing them? DGG ( talk ) 01:56, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to delete the content, but it equally doesn't make sense to leave it in article space. The bulk of untranslated articles I have seen have other defects as well, the severity of which is impossible to judge prior to translation.
Perhaps a better solution is to move them to subpages of Wikipedia:Articles for translation with language-based category tags so knowledgeable editors can find places needing work they may be able to do. Bongomatic 02:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
An article copy-pasted from a different-language Wikipedia into enwiki's mainspace doesn't add anything to the project; it can still be found on its home wiki with attribution (which is overwhelmingly likely to be missing in such a copy-paste). If it's not already on a foreign-language Wikipedia, it's not an A2, so since it is, there's no reason to store it in a subpage outside of mainspace; by the time someone gets to it, the source article will quite possibly have been updated anyway. The correct way to ask for a translation from a foreign-language Wikipedia is described at WP:Translation; doing a textdump in mainspace, walking away, and effectively demanding that someone clean up after you is not it. —Korath (Talk) 03:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
A2 is sufficiently broadly worded to include articles that are partially translated or machine translated. Clarifying this would be sufficient. Bongomatic 06:22, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
The reason i think speedy is wrong for these in all cases is that our goal is to get articles properly translated if they basically meet our standards--that someone didn't follow the right procedure shouldn';t prevent us from doing this. Placing the article here is a request for there to be an English article on the subject. If I come across such a p. and can do a partial translation I do just that. (I also check the original, and add the sources). If I couldn't do it I would simply add the correct template : {{:Expand Language|Title} The pages that have this template also have a stub English text, but WT:Translation does not seem to actually require that. DGG ( talk ) 22:51, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal re SD tags and SD user messages

Problem
Consider the following scenario:

  1. New user creates new page that meets a speedy deletion criteria.
  2. New page patroller tags the page for SD, and places a message on the user's talk page.
  3. New user reads both messages, and thinks "They are right. I should remove that article". Or "Okay, the joke between my friends and I are over. Let's get rid of the article". And other similar thoughts...
  4. New user then blanks the entire article (which would usually mean G7 applies).
  5. Vandalism patroller (usually a newer one in this scenario) comes across the page blanking, sees that it is 'obvious' vandalism and doesn't see the history or the fact that it blanked CSD tags, and reverts the page blanking.
  6. Vandalism patroller than cautions new user for vandalism.

The above scenario happens a lot. I don't have the statistics, but I come across it on a regular basis. The problem is that the user is cautioned about the Wikipedia rules for articles, decides to follow the rules and get rid of the article, and this is cautioned/warned for breaking the rules. For new users it can come across has somewhat BITE-y. They thought they were doing the right thing, they see themselves in a no-win situation with the overwhelming number of WP rules and policies, and decide this project isn't worth their time and effort.

Proposed Solution
On both the SD tags and user messages we add something like the following sentence:

If you are the author and you agree that the page should be removed, you can either leave everything in place (which will allow the deletion to continue) or add {{db-g7}} to the page.

This should at least cut down on the frequency of the problem coming up. It may seem obvious to us, but it isn't to a new user.

Problems with Solution
The only problem I can foresee with the proposal is instruction creep. Hopefully, if we keep the one additional sentence short enough, the problem from CREEP will be overshadowed by the number of new users we end up saving. Singularity42 (talk) 15:35, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I doubt that it would work. Since most patrollers rely on Twinkle or Huggle or NPWatcher, it would be more prudent imho to have those tools modified to check the history and warn the NP patroller if the blanking user is the creating user (and offer to G7 tag it instead). Regards SoWhy 15:44, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Should this happen, User:SDPatrolBot marks as G7 (when the page is blanked by creator while tagged for deletion). It doesn't always get there first, but should get most of these cases. You might have noticed it not getting them recently, since SDPatrolBot was down for about a month. When I used to use Huggle, I would try and check if the blanker was the creator (unless the article was obviously not new) - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:17, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
No amount of new rules or bots is going to stop shoot-first-and-ask-questions-never style vandal fighters I'm afraid. The best thing about vandal fighting tools is also the worst thing: it's sooo easy and fast, who needs to think? Beeblebrox (talk) 22:43, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
That's exactly it. It is very difficult to stop the "too quick" vandal fighters. But if we're able to drop the numbers of the page blanking that leads to the problem, even by a small amount, it will help. It won't solve the problem, but it will reduce it. Singularity42 (talk) 23:00, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Common sense

If I changed the article titled William Shakespeare to a redirect to a non-existent page, will it get speedily deleted in a few minutes? I've seen something similar happen. I think one is supposed to use some common sense in things like these (and I think I've seen at least one person say that's too much trouble).

This no-context tag is troubling. Obviously it's a badly written article on a lot of levels. In particular it doesn't give enough context to tell the lay reader that statistics is what it's about. But wouldn't a moment with Google have told the person that inquiring at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Statistics might have borne fruit? Michael Hardy (talk) 04:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

There was no context on that article, and it's been redirected for months now. Is this driving towards something? Shadowjams (talk) 08:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
There was enough context that someone could have figured out what explicit context-setting should have been added. It's been redirected only for a couple of days; I redirected it after restoring its edit history. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:01, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Actually, what was going on with that article. It was speedy tagged for one and a half years?! That's got to be a bug, or else there's a serious backlog. Shadowjams (talk) 08:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
No bug; it was deleted 30 April 2008, restored 17 November 2009. BencherliteTalk 08:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I see no problem at all with this speedy deletion tag. There was not enough context to indicate what the article was about. It was also a completely pointless article, probably a couple of sentences taken out of context from some other article/book/etc, and certainly not adequate as a self-standing article. A {{db-cocontext}} tag was exactly the correct thing to do. As for the idea that anyone coming across such a pointless Wikipedia article should search on Wikipedia to try to find out what it means, and then enquire about it at the appropriate Wikiproject, I find that a remarkable suggestion. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:28, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how you can call it completely pointless. It was clearly an attempt to explain what additive models are and to contrast them with more general non-parametric statistical models. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:29, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

No: If no previous version of the article were usable, then yes, but that's not gonna happen here. Before speedy-deleting administrators should check histories. If it happened then someone goofed and it should be restored or a determination made that all previous versions were speedyable.
However, this can happen: Someone moves an article then maliciously tags the leftover redirect as db-author or with some other non-controversial tag, and an administrator in a hurry deletes it. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:31, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I see this about once a week, generally to an article that is at AfD. More usual, of course, is to simply remove most of the content and AfD the article. DGG ( talk ) 23:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Partial CSD bot

User:Kingpin13 suggested to me that as I was creating a bot to do with CSD, I should post a thread here asking for comment. The bot will mark pages that have only whitespace (or are empty) with speedy deletion, and warn the user in question. The full discussion is at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/MichaelkourlasBot.

Any comments, questions and concerns? --Michael Kourlas (talk) 23:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer but Kingpin13 already has a bot that does so, User:SDPatrolBot, so it would be unnecessary trouble to write a new one, especially if it needs human supervision. I understand that Kingpin13 is not able to run his bot continually but I'd have thought the solution to this would be to give the bot to someone else rather than have a new bot created that does the same but also runs only at certain times... Regards SoWhy 22:52, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Actually, my bot has a different function than User:SDPatrolBot. SDPatrolBot's user page says: "If a page which has previously been nominated for speedy deletion is blanked completely by the creator, then this bot will mark it for deletion under G7." My bot simply takes new pages that have only one contributor or edit, and marks them with db-author or db-a3 respectively. My bot does not deal with pages that have been previously marked with speedy deletion. And anyway, as User:Kingpin13 posted a comment yet did not tell me what you told me, I'm guessing that our bots do not conflict in terms of roles. --Michael Kourlas (talk) 23:10, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Ah, okay, I see the understand, although I think SDPatrolBot could do that as well. The main concern I have is that I think such a bot should run more often and probably unsupervised. On a more general note, maybe be should consider having someone run a bot that does all those CSD related tasks from toolserver. Regards SoWhy 21:36, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, ideally, all bots with tasks like this should run constantly. However, at the moment, no such bot exists that does what my bot would do. Thus, wouldn't it be good to use it as at least a temporary solution, to be discontinued when a more permanent solution can be created and placed on toolserver? --Michael Kourlas (talk) 23:57, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
What if the page is a category page, otherwise meets your criteria, and is blanked by the creator, will your bot tag it G7? - Dank (push to talk) 00:53, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
It shouldn't, as categories are not part of the main namespace (i.e., they are called "Category:*category name*", instead of just "*category name*". Sorry if I didn't make this clear enough, but the bot will only tag pages in the article (main) namespace. --Michael Kourlas (talk) 01:02, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Speaking of which ... G7 technically contradicts the category speedy deletion criteria, guys, since they don't allow speedy deletion for blanking a category page. - Dank (push to talk) 01:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Great! I guess there's no problem, then. Any other questions or comments? --Michael Kourlas (talk) 01:36, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Deleting Admin templates

I propose the creation of a new template and standard practice that upon a CSD deletion, the deleting admin should add the template to the original creator's talk page.

The template would say:

  • That the page was deleted and a link to the criteria (or just the general criteria)
  • That the admin will provide the user with a copy of the deleted page, assuming it wasn't attack, vandalism, or a copyright infringement, upon a simple request (or if the admin will not, a message directing the user to a forum where they may ask)

This would not be policy but general practice, and would not be general practice in the case of attack pages, vandalism, and copyright vios.

This would help new users by saving them the trouble of having to rewrite pages, and would provide them a quick explanation of why the page was deleted. The only obvious downsides are the extra time it takes an admin to add the template (could be made part of automated tools) and the possibility that users will continuously recreate the same page by copy pasting back into it (which can be dealt with through normal blocks/salts). The second piece is not obvious to new users and may allay a substantial frustration of a new user.

Curious to hear thoughts. Shadowjams (talk) 02:25, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. Make a draft in your userspace. I'd favor a unified "your [article/image/userpage/etc] was deleted under the [insert procedure here] by [insert administrator here] for the reason [insert reason here]." Followed by a link to the deletion-appeal or restoration-process, e.g. deletion review or, for prod, simply asking any admin to restore the article. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:32, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Agree, I think that would be a good idea and can be integrated quite easily in scripts like CSDHelper or Twinkle I guess. The downside probably is that a large number of admins do not use those tools and probably will not bother with such a template. That would be something a kind of unified CSD bot could take care of instead (alongside a number of other things like replacing removed tags, tagging blank pages for G7, notifying the creator if the tagging user did not do so etc. - we just would need someone to be able to write something like that and to run it 24/7 or from toolserver...). Regards SoWhy 06:59, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I delete about 100 images a day and maybe 100 redirects twice a week, overall there are about 5,000 deletions a day, do we really want that level of additional talk page spam (10,000 CSD notifications a day.) MBisanz talk 07:08, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Good point, good point. Another reason to have a bot do it. I think Shadowjams suggestion is based on the fact that deletion can be irritating to new users who find their article suddenly gone. A bot could check whether the page creator is a newbie (editcount < 100 or registered < 90 days or something like that), active and whether they already received such a message before (thus avoiding to re-tell them what could have happened) before adding such messages, which would probably reduce the 10,000 notifications a day you mention to a less spammy number (since for example many image or redirect deletions are for pages created long ago). For example most files that are CSDable are deleted after a minimum of 7 days which is more than enough time for the uploader to notice that they were notified about it and the bot could simply ignore such deletions. Regards SoWhy 07:26, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I hadn't considered the bot idea. That would make it much easier to make discrete templates given the CSD deletion reason. It would be easy enough to parse the deletion log and apply the appropriate template (99% of all deletion logs give something easily parseable /[GAR][0-9]+:/). Obviously TW and HG could incorporate it into their systems, but this could be a nice stop-gap. I'll keep that in mind. Shadowjams (talk) 07:39, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll start working on that in my userspace, and I'd invite anybody familiar to help me add to it (I'll put a note in there to that extent). I may need to learn some template formatting, and I have some other distractions at the moment, but I'll work on this and check back here when I have something nearing completion. Shadowjams (talk) 07:20, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

MBisanz: I actually hadn't contemplated image or redirects as being included. In any case this would be up to admin discretion, and it really wouldn't work well for images (text is cheap; images take bandwidth, etc.). Given this do you think it would still be a problem? Shadowjams (talk) 07:22, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
If the article was correctly tagged for speedy deletion and the tagger informed the author, why add this follow up message? ϢereSpielChequers 12:16, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I am against this proposal. If the author has been notified that the article is being considered for deletion they will almost certainly check to see if it has been deleted, and if they choose not to then why waste time posting yet another template about it? In addition there is the fact that the substantial majority of speedily deleted pages are complete rubbish, the author knows why it was up for deletion, and there is no point in putting work into following it up. A minority of cases involve good-faith articles that were near to being acceptable, but it would be crazy to institute such a system, adding thousands of pointless templates every day, to catch that minority, especially when, as I have said, the users are normally warned of impending deletion and can easily check if they wish to. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:25, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
(e/c) I am all for a bot to inform users of deletions where they have not been warned by the tagger. However, per ϢereSpielChequer above, if the user's talk page has already been tagged with a csd-warn template, there should not be a separate template added to their page to inform of admin deletion. Template's already exist to inform of admin deletion for the major deletion bases. See {{nn-warn-deletion}} {{empty-warn-deletion}} {{nonsense-warn-deletion}} {{nothanks-warn-deletion}} and {{spam-warn-deletion}}. Is the reason for proposing this so that all users are informed that the admin will provide a copy? I do not think that is a good enough reason to add a separate template after a user has already been warned of the the tagging basis and the article is deleted using that basis. Moreover, even for the cases where the user has not been warned, or the admin deletes under a different basis than they were warned (where I think one of the templates I posted above should be added), I would not want any bot informing users for me that I'd provide a copy of the deleted article. I will provide copies but when I will do so is sui generis and not well suited to a blanket notification that I will (I think some admins will never and I bet they'd love the presumption). I would not provide a copy if I have deleted under another criterion but all the hallmarks of a copyvio are present, though I can't find it through google. In that case I would ask about the possibility of copying and await a response. I would not provide a copy if it's an article that should never exist such as an A7 that is on a topic pretty clearly "made up one day". I also would not if it was a blatant G11 and the user has been external link spamming. Again, it's dependent on circumstances and context.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Deleting promotional userpage drafts.

Recently I have been seeing an increase in the amount of promotional articles not being deleted because they are instantly being created using their userspace. I already created a discussion on the Administrators' noticeboard and still I think that is not enough because the current G11 rule stated is not being enforced a lot on these promotional drafts.

Sure we can tag them using the current rules we already have but we may need to fix this advantage that these promotional drafts are constantly using. MajorMinorMark (talk) 23:27, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, one thing we need which would go some way toward solving this is for users with new page patrol chops to also patrol articles in Category:Unreviewed new articles (to those unaware, articles created using the article wizard in a subpage automatically have {{Userspace draft}} posted, which automatically converts to {{New unreviewed article}} when a page is moved from the userspace to the mainspace, which then places the page into the category). However, some userspace drafts may get the userspace draft template removed before the move, or shortly after the move, thus bypassing not just newpages, but review from the category as well. We could solve the problem entirely I think by making all pages created via the article wizard always show up in newpages once they are moved to the mainspace, no matter how long they have sat in userspace, but I don't know if that's technically feasible. In any event, I am going to go over the WT:NPP and post about reviewing the category. By the way, this is not just a G11 problem but all applicable CSD.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:58, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
NPP and related patrolling tools should "kick in" when an article is moved into main-space, not when the page is created. Of course, there's also the ability to sneakily bypass this by making a crummy article in mainspace that barely meets content guidelines, waiting 30 days or so, replacing its content with a promotion of an unrelated item and moving the article to a new location. Hmm, maybe NPP should monitor all creations and moves where the destination is mainspace. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:37, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Well I think, though I could be wrong, that the OP is addressing his question not to deletion of userpace drafts as G11s, but to the large spike in articles now being moved from the userspace to the mainspace (which increase results from the article wizard), thus bypassing review through newpages patrol.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:49, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Existing users or apparent SPA user pages? CSD. The boundary of mainspace and userspace should not be an international border without an extradition treaty like it is now. Local laws may vary worldwide, but there are plenty of things not allowed anywhere. Users should not be allowed to drag their promotional content south of the border and live off it there. I'd even claim IAR, since I can't see how it wouldn't improve Wikipedia's to no longer permit unpatrolled personal and promotional content in obvious public view. If it's an indexed area of Wikipedia it should have the same guidelines and enforcement. An excellent recent example is Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Sehbueno, where a user was taking advantage of this loophole in userspace. The only objection to deletion was the author, with reason being this loophole. The only reason the discussion ended peacefully was that the user eventually requested deletion! To many, it looks absurd, I remember at least 1 deletion review requests that were instead requests for deletion of these types of pages that survived their XfDs on the technicality alone. Almost unanimous agreement with common sense behind it, but valid defense is via an essential loophole? Not good for morale.
New users? Biting is bad, so how about a softer alternative? ...A soft blanking and a template? I've blanked a few new articles from new users in the past because quick research was encouraging but there were a few awful BLP or uninvolved person privacy problems (or last time, it was over about self-declared content copyvio). Could I have CSD'd? Yes, but every time, I've put manually placed a {{notice}} on the article and written a personal message on the user's talk page. Not once has anyone reacted in frustration. Authors seem understanding so long as you reassure them that their text has not been deleted and you explained what you'd done. I even tell them that we can change it all back in 2 seconds once discussed (since we can!). Continued misunderstanding? See User:Guitarherochristopher for how it can take 6 weeks and 7 ANIs to get a single WP:MYSPACE issue corrected because there isn't a more clear-cut policy like CSD to help enforce it. I have no suggestion to offer from that, but it's an interesting case study of admins going extremely far to help others (which is good), but also tolerating continued abuses (not so good). ♪ daTheisen(talk) 03:49, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
It's not even ignoring the rules. The "G" in "G11" stands for "general", meaning that it applies to any page anywhere. If someone wrote an attack article in userspace, it could be deleted under G10. If someone makes their userpage promotional, it's removable under G11. The same would be true of, for example, an image of a product with "Buy Acme Widgets!" embedded into it. No IAR needed, if you write an ad anywhere in any space, it can be deleted under G11. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
This has been discussed more than once before, with no resolution. There seem to be several problems here, including the fact that some Wikipedians actually think that userspace is exempt from the rules, and (perhaps more importantly) the fact that there is a strong tendency to take the line "since it's only in userspace we can wait for a while to give teh user a chance to work on it". However, very often the user has no intention of working on it; they are happy to leave it as it is, as long as they have avoided having it deleted. A while ago i was involved in an MfD discussion. A completely unacceptable spam article had been deleted after an AfD, and then, at the author's request userfied specifically to give the user a chance to improve it. After about six weeks the author had made no attempt to edit it at all. The MfD discussion closed with "keep", because various people argued that teh time that had passed was not enough: editors should be given at least three months to work on their spam. I think this is absurd: once it has been decided that a page is not acceptable for Wikipedia there is no good reason to allow it to remain in existence for several months. The author could have started on editing it within a few days, and had clearly not done so because he had no intention of doing so: he wanted to keep it in its spammy form, not an improved, despammed form, and the fact that to do so he had to have "User:" at the start of its title did not concern him. Unfortunately, as long as there is a large body of opinion which thinks that almost anything is alright as long as it's in userspace, cases like this will continue. What is more, such negative, time-wasting, experiences discourage me (and no doubt others) from trying to have other userspace pages deleted. We don't need any new rules or mechanisms, we need to change the culture. The one thing I can think of which may help is a specific statement somewhere in some policy that content unacceptable in mainspace can be tolerated in userspace only for a very brief period. This policy could then be cited in discussions such as teh one I have referred to, and maybe slowly this might contribute to weakening the "must never delete anything from userspace" bias, which is very widespread. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:45, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:Attack page

There's a long discussion in several sections at WT:POLICY that's going to generate a discussion at VPP and an RFC soon, but there are a few loose ends to clear up first. The gist of it is: in order to help people understand better how most policy pages tend to improve over time, we'd like to take the policy pages that don't improve over time for one reason or another (and not all of the reasons are bad), and move most of them into Category:Wikipedia legal policies or a proposed Category:Wikipedia administrative policies. WP:Attack page hasn't significantly changed this year (except for the single word "personal" I discussed a few months ago), and hardly changed last year. Both the page and the talk page are rarely edited, probably because people generally talk about G10 issues here (naturally enough). The page is very short (and could get shorter), and I think the material could live comfortably on this page. Any thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 01:22, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

P.S. And it probably should live on this page ... some of it is important information about G10 that few people are reading. I know I've never clicked on the "attack page" link in G10, I bet few people have. - Dank (push to talk) 01:36, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm... a little confused about the question. You're looking to link the policy to here or merge it? Respectfully I'd oppose, since it'd invite any policy at all attached to any deletion criteria were added here. By the way... can I ask why would anything get moved to "legal policy"? That seems to literally be for legal matters and things that would be cited in court cases, and none of our policies/guidelines are law. Saying "administrative policy" I'd think would have to be incredibly precise as it might be confused by users for things that only administrators need to follow or worry about. Well. Although it might be cool to show how adaptive some policies have gotten over time, I'd say it's equally cool that some are so solid and practical that they're never significantly changed. ... Personally, I don't like the idea. "Attack page" isn't only a term for admins, or only a term people use when speaking of CSD, and if policies are ever separated out into "age" or "audience" it would greatly confuse people about which had more weight of importance. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 04:19, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm talking about merging, because that page has important information on G10 that people aren't reading because they're expecting to find guidance on G10 on this page. There aren't any other policies that are about CSD criteria, other than this page and that one, so we don't have to worry about setting up a precedent that affects other policy pages. On the other points, feel free to jump in at WT:POLICY, and VPP with an RFC is coming soon. - Dank (push to talk) 04:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Btw, if anyone has been thinking about adding more stuff to either that page or G10 on this page, or if anyone thinks that it's too much information for this page, that works for me too, we could keep WP:Attack pages ... but right now, the focus at that page is different from this page (that page mentions a check for notability first, this page doesn't mention notability at all and stresses that the deletion should happen "speedily"), which is another indication that people are rarely reading that page. If you want to keep the page, then I'd recommend we send eyeballs over there by deleting all the content here under G10 except for a sentence and a pointer to that page, and when people try to talk about G10 on this talk page, tell them that's covered by a different policy page, and please discuss it over there. - Dank (push to talk) 04:43, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd still have to say to leave it. There are several pieces of text in the db-xx template series that give a direct link in the first line of what the concern is, and this is one of them. Wikipedia:Spam is another, as is Wikipedia:Vandalism; probably are a few others. Spam and vandalism are across a spectrum, but NPA is kind of a yes/no statement; I'd expect this to be a lot shorter. Actually, this could need expansion. Per an old CSD-R2 there is no "normal" Wikipedia page of this name; it was a cross-namespace redirect. Huh. Odd no one ever remade it since it can be a general term, too. It'll put it another way, if this were merged in, when someone in the far corners of the galaxy typed "attack page" into Google it would bring them directly to CSD. Yikes. Well. Apparently I'm the only person in the history of the internet to call something an "attack page"; for me going back to when getting a new free page somewhere was big for someone and if they devoted it to personal attacks on someone else? Wow, that's big! It could ruin that person if it ever made it into a search engine index a few years later! You know, a page... that attacks. "Attack site" meaning the same. Okay. Ignore that. My reasoning from above stands though, especially about use in the db-attack template; Also that there's no way that the article could be a 1-line definition put into the main CSD article. Like how every interstate has its own article under the interstate system as a whole even if but 1 mile long, leave it even if it's short. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 05:43, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm sticking with "There aren't any other policies that are about CSD criteria." WP:SPAM is a guideline, and WP:VANDALISM isn't primarily about G3. WP:OFFICE is about any kind of Office Action, and that and WP:C are being considered for one of the new subcats. My point is: I think we're free to do whatever seems best with WP:Attack pages, we don't have to worry about that setting some kind of precedent for other pages. - Dank (push to talk) 14:33, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Incorrectly tagged articles for CSD

Is there a template I can use to notify an editor that they have incorrectly tagged an article for speedy deletion? If so, is it acceptable to use it with regular users (I'm thinking of the essay WP:DTTR)? Stephen! Coming... 13:49, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

There are. See {{sdd}}, {{sdd2}}, {{sdd3}} and note {{declinedsd}}. I would hesitate using any of them when notifying a highly experienced user.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:57, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
There is also {{uw-csd}}. Fuhghettaboutit is correct about regular users though, I usually only notify people will less experience. You can use CSDHelper btw which offers an automatic notification and makes the whole CSD work easier in other ways as well :-) Regards SoWhy 14:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! Stephen! Coming... 14:50, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Meaning of "credible" in A7

I asked a couple of admins this question but got no response. Could anyone clarify the A7 criterea so I don't end up having speedys declined. My query concerns the criterea for A7 which state A7 does not apply when there is "any credible claim of significance or importance". What does credible mean here? Surely a vague "he won lots of awards" is not credible, and something like "He won the Turner prize twice and the Orange Prize in 2008" would be credible. I know we don't need references or anything, but surely we need something verifiable otherwise every article asserting that the subject "is the cleverest guy in Texas" or whatever would have to go the PRDO/AfD route? --Pontificalibus (talk) 11:13, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

The "credible" part is to cover those articles where the claim of importance/significance exists but easily can be recognized as false. A "won a lot of awards" is (imho) credible, since it's possible that the subject did win those awards. On the other hand things like "has won 10 Nobel Peace prizes", "is widely considered the best lover of the world" or "can shoot fire from his hands" would not be credible claims of importance since they are almost certainly not true. I suggest a conservative approach to the question: If the claim could be true, treat it as credible. The word is just used so that some high school kiddies cannot game the system by making incredible claims of their own importance and then complain why we deleted their vanity articles. Regards SoWhy 11:44, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, what SoWhy said. "Credible" does not mean "convincing" in this case, it means "plausible" - is it possible someone "won lots of awards"? Well yeah, even 10 year old child stars, show pigs, and video games have won lots of awards. You can tag it with {{fact}} if you want though. Dcoetzee 12:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Of course if you don't believe that someone has won a particular award, a quick bit of googling might show whether you are dealing with a {{db-hoax}} or a prodigy. ϢereSpielChequers 13:08, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
If it requires Googling it's not a db-hoax, just a plain old hoax - other deletion channels are advisable. Dcoetzee 16:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
In my mind "credible" means "plausible." HOWEVER, if searching proves all otherwise-plausible claims are false, then A7 applies, as there are no longer any credible claims of notability. Do use a little common sense though: If a person sayd "Dr. Adam Jones won the XYZ prize in 1973" the submitter may have been mistaken - he may have won the prize in 1974 or he may have won another equally-notable award in 1973. When in doubt, don't speedy. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:37, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of blank user-space pages

Spitfire has, without discussion, removed the long-standing restriction that speedy deletion of author-blanked pages does not apply in user space, and in an edit summary has said "Pls Start a topic on the talkpage if you disagree".

This was discussed at considerable length in July 2008. I suggest not making any changes without at least reading the discussion in the archive of this talk page, and preferably also giving good reasons here for wishing to overturn the decision reached at the conclusion of that discussion. Many users, myself included, keep pages in userspace in which they put material, remove it, put in more material etc. There are several good reasons for doing this: pages to use as scratch pads for material being worked on, logs to keep records of work currently in progress, etc etc. Such pages will from time to time become temporarily empty, and there is no good reason to delete them. Sometimes the user may even realise they need to return to the page's history, which they can't if it has been deleted. Spitfire says "a userspace page may be blanked as a request for deletion". Yes, but it may be blanked for many other reasons, and many users do blank their user space pages for other reasons, as you will see if you read the discussion on it; also there is a perfectly good and unambiguous way of requesting deletion of a userspace page, namely tagging it for CSD-U1, so why do we need to have another way? Furthermore, there is the question "what advantages come from deleting such empty userspace pages?" Since the material is not actually removed from Wikipedia's server disks, but kept archived, no disk space is saved: on the contrary, a very small amount of extra space is used to add a deletion log entry. In article-space we delete user-test pages because we don't want readers tripping over blank pages (which could happen either by following a link or through the Random Article feature). We also may want the title to be redlinked as a more visible statement that we don't have an article by that title and to tacitly encourage someone to write it. Likewise, we clean out user-test Templates and Wikipedia pages because we don't want our experienced editors being similarly misled. However, those justifications would not seem to apply to a page in userspace. There was a lot of discussion along these lines when the issue was discussed, but this should be enough to illustrate the idea.

I sincerely hope that this is not the start of a new thread on this. I have only posted this at all because Spitfire requested it. It has already been discussed, as I have said, at great length and a conclusion reached, and, unless some new reasons have come up, I see no point in repeating it all. JamesBWatson (talk) 15:20, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed: keep the exception for userspace. I have a handful of pages in my userspace that are blank at certain points in time but I don't want them deleted. –xenotalk 15:23, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Agree with Xeno. There was never a discussion to change that. Your userspace is yours to decide what to do with (with few exceptions) and if you don't want to have them deleted, why should someone else do it? There is no point in doing so. Regards SoWhy 15:50, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I can't imagine any reason to delete these pages. Dcoetzee 16:45, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
List my agreement as well. Debresser (talk) 17:39, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
If a user blanks a page in his own user-space, IMHO that alone should not be considered a request for deletion. However, some editors may blank a page with an edit summary or other indicator that clearly indicates a wish to delete the page. Of course, the normal rules of deleting user-space content apply, e.g. edits that reveal personal info about a 3rd party without permission should be deleted or oversighted per longstanding wiki-tradition. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:42, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes of course. Clearly there are situations where userspace pages need to be deleted, with or without the user's request, and also there are clearly various ways that a user can request deletion, including edit summaries. However, there does seem to be consensus that blanking a page should not be automatically presumed to request deletion. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:35, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

A lot of users thinking blanking a page is equivalent to deleting it. "I can't imagine any reason to delete these pages." These pages still remain in places like search engines. They can also contain bad info in the page history (which is likely why the person attempted deletion by blanking the page...). --MZMcBride (talk) 11:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Search engines use the most recent version of the page. There are a few search engines that remember historical pages, but AFAIK Google does not once its refreshed. Come to think of it, I don't think user pages are indexed at all any more. A better solution would be an bot that watched for user-page blanking, and 24 hours after a user-page is blanked, checked to see if it was deleted. If it was not, post a note on the user's talk page with instructions on how to use db-user. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 13:19, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
They are still indexed, one of the pages I worked on in userspace was a Google search hit when I searched for the subject (see the 6th result here). But deleting does not get rid of them, because Google caches the page when it indexes it and while I deleted the page in question for example, Google still has a copy of it. So that does not support MZM's argument, it rather contradicts it since a blanked page would be indexed again as blank. I don't think a bot is a viable idea, it would spam the user talk spaces with instructions people usually don't need. Most new users will find out how to request deletion using the {{helpme}} template or the helpdesk if that is what they want and I think the most users know about page histories sooner or later since they are one of the most prominent features of Wikipedia. Regards SoWhy 13:45, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, my fears seem to have been justified: this has turned out to be the start of a whole new thread on this. I still see no reason to consider overturning the earlier consensus: has anyone come up with a new reason not already discussed? I am certain it is true that "a lot of users thinking blanking a page is equivalent to deleting it", but it isn't. If there is a reason why a blanked user-space page must be deleted (such as containing "bad info in the page history") then it can be deleted: but that is a long way from saying that all user-space pages, blanked for whatever reason, should be deleted. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Retrograde force

I'm embarrassed that I'm having a tough time with this call, but I am. G10 or AfD? My inclination is to take it to AfD, and only speedy it if there's consensus at the AfD to do so. - Dank (push to talk) 04:05, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not a speedy - it serves a purpose other than to denigrate Muslims, and advances a terrifically novel and peculiar argument. That said, it's POV-pushing garbage, and I'm confident if you AFDed it it'd get snow-deleted inside a day. RayTalk 04:12, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. BTW, it isn't just Muslims: the Romani (Gypsies) are pretty much consigned to the scrapheap of history, too. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 04:25, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Shawn, you made the catch on this one, you're welcome to AfD it if you like. - Dank (push to talk) 04:37, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Shall we see if the PROD remains? Shawn in Montreal (talk) 04:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
I would just let the PROD expire. That's what PROD is there for... Singularity42 (talk) 04:43, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Fine. I'll AfD it if and when the article creator removes the PROD, which I suspect he will. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 04:46, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Ugh, I find myself wishing for a {{prod3}} to add to this. Disgusting. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:00, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Nothing wrong with more than one PROD2. It won't show up in Oldprodfull but it will be there "for the record." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:29, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Guess what? The original creator has removed the PROD tags. Philip Trueman (talk) 17:21, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Retrograde force Beeblebrox (talk) 18:05, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Extension of A9

Would many people oppose if A9 were to be extended to products and other media? 99-100% of the time products aren't notable in the least unless their company is notable. An example would be if somebody were to create Sprite without The Coca-Cola Company being created first.
Some people tend to make articles on people/places/things that aren't under A7, but the parent article is. Ex. somebody creates 2 pages. One is about his club, another is about the uniform of his club. The club gets speedied, and the uniform of his club stays at afd for 7 days, unless we ignore all rules. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 02:38, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

  • I'm not wholly opposed, but if a company's notable solely for a particular product, I'd much rather see the product article existing without the company article than vice-versa. Your uniform example is a perfect candidate for IAR; I'd be dismayed to see someone decline to speedy a spinout of a speedied article. —Korath (Talk) 03:17, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
I was thinking about that as well, but how many products are on Wikipedia (and are notable) without the company being notable? I don't think there are many if any at all. It is probably possible, but not very likely. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 03:20, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • How big a problem is this? The general purpose of CSD is to lighten the load at AFD, not necessarily zap articles ASAP. Yes, there are a few "delete on sight" categories like copyvio or harm-to-others/attack/etc. but generally the project isn't harmed if CSDs stick around a week or go to PROD, assuming the PROD results in a deletion and nobody asks for it to come back. Note: After a PROD deletion, any editor can request a restore and it's supposed to be granted automatically. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:24, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Query. Why A9 and not A7? Why are A9 and A7 differentiated at all? Why should any subject matter not be subjected to speedy deletion if there is neither indication of notability in the text, nor reference demonstrating notability? Bongomatic 03:36, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Not really sure, but it might be simply because those are the types of inappropriate articles most often created. People are far more likely to create articles for themselves, their friends, the clubs they participate in, an than they are to create articles on some piece of software they use. And I've seen enough pages for obscure musicians that I understand the purpose of A9 as well. But there's no need for new speedy deletion criteria for other non-notable areas; AFD and PROD do a pretty good job of taking care of them, and they don't do any harm in the meantime. Reach Out to the Truth 06:52, 25 November 2009 (UTC) (edited 18:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC))
Part of this is because most products fulfill a specialised function that your average admin is not able to independently evaluate. Popular culture is familiar to everyone - software, or farm equipment, or purses, are not. Such articles may contain implicit assertions of significance that someone not familiar with that area would not recognise as such. Dcoetzee 01:01, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Well put. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:12, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Pages in which the speedy-deletion tag may have been improperly removed

I added a new section, "Pages in which the speedy-deletion tag may have been improperly removed," to Template:CSD/Subcategories, which is transcluded into Category:Candidates for speedy deletion.

It's useful if you have a disruptive editor repeatedly removing a speedy-deletion tag and you want to make sure the page doesn't get lost in the shuffle before an administrator can look at it, as happened in the last hour. Hopefully, this won't get used all that much. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:44, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

This seems redundant to the reports the abuse filter makes for such cases. Is this meant as an automated process, or a manual one? Who decides if the user removing the tag is "responsible"? Beeblebrox (talk) 22:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Add "future publications" to A7

Unlike already published materials, I think requiring pages for as-yet-unpublished works to assert importance would help avoid some AFDs and be uncontroversial, particularly for items that barely make it past G11/unambiguous promotional material.

It won't stop people who know how to manipulate A7 and it won't get in the way of clearly important things like the next Star Trek film, but it will give a speedy-deletion criteria for most not-yet-released student films, books by minor authors, and music by smaller bands where for whatever reason G11 does not apply.

My questions required for CSD criteria:

  • Is this a problem that needs solving? Yes, I've seen a few instances lately (ex.: 1).
  • Will it do harm? Only to topics that actually are notable but whose importance is non-obvious and not stated. This is an inherent problem with A7.
  • Will it be non-controversial? I think so, as any future work that is already meeting wikipedia notability requirements, such as a major motion picture whose trailers are already in wide release, should be a no-brainer for an author to assert a credible claim of importance.

Your thoughts? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:09, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Music is already covered by A9 and the other things are far too uncommon for a change of A7. In the more than 10000 pages I patrolled for CSD, I have encountered maybe a handful future books or films (and most of those were either crystall balling sequels, claimed that notable actors will play in them or that they are written by someone notable, i.e. would not be covered by A7 anyway).
WP:CRYSTAL as a part of WP:NOT is not a speedy criterion for a very good reason, mostly because it's too difficult for a single admin to determine whether it really should be deleted. PROD and AFD are not overrun by such articles, so there is no need for any change. Regards SoWhy 15:39, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of valuable redirects to non-existent pages

Fibonacci retracement was deleted as a copyright violation; later someone deleted these:

on the grounds that they redirect to a non-existent page. The alleged policy requiring such speedy deletions was put there not by consensus, but by bullying, in the spring of 2005. Here you see the reason why there should not be such a policy: Editors may now created several articles under these disparate titles, unaware of each other's work, which will then need to get merged. The existence of the redirects to the non-existent title would prevent that problem. And and soon as a new article under the title Fibonacci retracement is created that is innocent of copyright problems, the redirects will need to get recreated. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:34, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

this whole argument is bizarre, if it's copyvio you can delete the contents
maybe you end up with a blank page, then people will fix it back
deleting the redirects is just mean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.170.59.139 (talk) 22:02, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Where is a policy requiring such speedy deletions? All speedy deletions are within the discretion of the reviewing admin and redirects can easily be changed to a appropriate target instead of speedy deletion. Regards SoWhy 18:53, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps someone can predict every future article that anyone will ever create that could possibly be written with multiple case combinations and anticipate their arrival with alternatively cased redirects. Seriously, the problem of which you speak is a fact of life, and the situation of which you speak, where it happens in the case of a topic that someone once wrote an actual article about that, alas, happens to have been deleted, represents a teensy, weensy proportion of all the instances of this case ambiguity that will ever arise. So *not* removing these redirects would only solve a teensy, weensy proportion of that problem; and I think this hardly compensates for the problem(s) caused by broken redirects, including the problem of blue links that don't go anywhere useful. —Largo Plazo (talk) 00:38, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The purported policy regards non-existent pages as inappropriate targets. That is wrong. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:07, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

  • Perhaps I'm dense, but what's the problem? Broken redirects are useless to the end user, which is why they are deleted. Should we preemptively have pluralized redirects and capitalization variations for everything, regardless of whether there's an article? Allowing broken redirects to exist doesn't solve the potential problem of duplicated work (which I don't think is much of a risk anyway). Creating redirects isn't difficult, and recreating after they've been speedily deleted (as broken redirects) isn't "against the rules." EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:59, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I think the issue is that the original article is very likely to be recreated soon, if it was deleted as a copyvio. But once it is recreated, who will know to recreate the redirects? There's no easy way to get a list of all the pages that used to link to a particular page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

So....recreate them when the article is recreated? CSD allows but doesn't mandate those pages be deleted, and it is perfectly reasonable that we have a criteria to uncontroversially delete redirects to deleted pages. I really fail to see the problem. Protonk (talk) 23:45, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"Just recreate them" completely misses the point. How can we recreate them when "What links here" doesn't find them? They may still exist as redlinks in articles, but once the redirect itself is deleted there's no obvious way to find them unless one already knows their names. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
In that case the situation is no worse than it would have been if the infringing author hadn't posted the article in the first place. It didn't become a more terrible problem just because someone had previously posted a deletion-worthy article under the same name. —Largo Plazo (talk) 00:38, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
How does it miss the point? They aren't necessary for the article to exist, and it is not unreasonable for editors to create them for new articles. If a few spelling mistake redirection are missed, then it isn't a big deal. Furthermore, the deletions are still not mandatory. Protonk (talk) 06:10, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

This is not just about combinations of cases, or of singulars and plurals; it's also about commonplace misspellings and misnomers, or about cases where one name is more suitable as the title of an encyclopedia article than another is. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:58, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

All of the arguments above still apply. —Largo Plazo (talk) 03:07, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I agree with most everyone above - a redirect to nowhere is useless and should be deleted. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:49, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Personally I think redirects to nonexistent articles are worse than useless, they're confusing - these pages turn up in search results, on Google searches, and take you... nowhere. It's bizarre. The only case in which redirects to nonexistent pages should not be deleted is if someone is known to be in the near future recreating that article. Dcoetzee 03:52, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • You've started this discussion repeatedly, [1], [2], and [3] are some of the more recent ones, each time with comments about bullying and forced polices, and each time you've gotten little support. Why not stop worrying about such an unimportant issue?--Jac16888Talk 04:12, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • (EC) I know that I personally would be inclined to wait and check back in a day or so if I ran across a redirect with a {{hangon}} on it saying "The article this points to was deleted for copyright problems, a new stub without that problem will be up shortly." I can't imagine anyone else would have an issue with that either. Further, this is an extreme edge case, and Michael, to be honest with you, I'm skeptical every time I see your name come up, since you so often do present these very rare cases as something we should adjust policy based on. We should make policy based on what happens 99.999% of the time, not 0.001%. In this case, 99.999% of the time, broken redirects should be deleted. If you believe that an exceptional circumstance exists, it is your responsibility to deal with that and request an exception. It is not everyone else's responsibility to do things in a totally inefficient manner to prevent something that in practice almost never happens. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:17, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
    • That's making the assumption that the just-deleted page will be recreated soon. The last thing we need is yet another type of maintenance tag that will be dropped on a page and then promptly forgotten. I'm still not seeing a problem with deleting the broken redirects. (you're spot on about your 99.999%/0.001% comparison) EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:41, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Seraphimblade, what you can't imagine happening has happened. It always happens. Speedy deleter always ignore such tags. I proposed to change that 0.001% figure so that it's much higher—e.g. 20%, and you say that's not important because it's 0.001%. When the telephone was invented, some people said it's not useful because telegraphs already existed. All of the people who said that were named Seraphimblade. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I concur with Seraphimblade and most others above me. Frankly, redirects are so easy to re-create if the article is re-created, this is a non-issue. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 07:00, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Willoughby, why don't you read my position before you criticize it? Recreate redirects if the article is recreated? What if the article has never existed? I was talking about redirects for pre-emptive purposes, and I explained why they are useful. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:37, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I did read your position, but I misunderstood what you were trying to say. That said, I still disagree with you. None of your reasons for creating broken redirects are convincing; the counterarguments are far more convincing. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 00:42, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Rare cases? They are rare only because they are not allowed to be commonplace. Thousands of useful redirects to non-existent pages could be created if it were allowed. They wouldn't be rare if they were permitted not to be rare. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:34, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

ABUSE: It seems abusive to argue that something is unimportant because it's rare, when the reason why it's rare is that those making that argument coercively prevent it from being commonplace. They have bots that enforce this prohibition very fast and very efficiently. Therefore no one bothers to create such pages. Therefore it's rare. Then they say "Look it's so rare, so it's not important." It was once commonplace, before the policy was amended without proper consensus. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:42, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

How are broken redirects helpful? The provide no information to the reader, chiefly because they redirect the reader to a non-existent page. No content, no content, nothing. That is not helpful. (this reply also serves as my response to your email to me, Michael) EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:47, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I've already explained how they're useful: redirects from commonplace mispellings, misnomers, or names that are not as good as an article title as another name, prevent the creation of multiple articles on the same topic whose editors don't know of each others articles and so can't collaborate, and prevent infelicitously titled articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:57, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
....all true when the article exists and effectively useless when the article does not exist. Protonk (talk) 20:18, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Michael, on the matter that redirects based on pluralization and misspellings are valuable, we are in agreement. We should have such redirects, as they benefit the end user when they are searching for information (it should be noted that nobody is actually arguing against you on this particular front). However, if the article doesn't exist, those redirects are absolutely and utterly worthless. How does the [made-up] redirect "testerfords" explain what a "testerford" is? Or how about the misspelling of "tesderford"? It doesn't. If we don't have an article on a particular topic, we shouldn't be wasting our time creating redirects that convey no information; our time would be better spent writing the articles, rather than preemptively redirecting to them. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:03, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
That's absurd. When the article does not exist then users can create separate articles with different titles. How can you deny that? If a pre-emptive redirect from A to B exists, and then someone tries to create A, they get directed to B and can create taht. Otherwise they create A and someone else later creates B and they're not aware of each other. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
A savvy user would first search for B and likely find A before creating it. –xenotalk 20:41, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Uh. Yes. I'm really failing to see the problem here. CSD doesn't mandate we delete redirects to non-existent pages, it just allows us to do so. So an admin may search through "what links here" and remove redirects or she may not. If those redirects are deleted and someone recreates the article any editor can recreate the redirect. They can even recreate the redirect while it points to a deleted article, if they so choose. Why is this a problem? Protonk (talk) 20:51, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Also, you say it prevents the creation of duplicate articles, just exactly how often does that happen, because i've only ever seen it a few times, and when it does happen, we have that handy history merge ability to make one better article out of the two, I doubt they're going to be the same as each other--Jac16888Talk 21:31, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Are you intentionally ignoring the fact, which I've already pointed out two or three times, that while you are making this situation out to be a complete and utter disaster that must be avoided at all costs, it is no different from the case that exists where an article has never existed in the first place, and is no more horrible than that? You are carrying on about something that, in the context of the bigger picture, is really, really, really unimportant. —Largo Plazo (talk) 20:32, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Merging two long articles with each other is an enormous amount of work—effort that could have been used creating or editing other articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:02, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Less effort than starting the same discussion again and again. Besides, how often is it where two long articles are been created about the same subject, they would have the same editors writing them soon enough, you're arguing this can fix a problem which simply doesn't exist--Jac16888Talk 22:16, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Michael: Part of having a discussion is that you pay attention to what you're responding to so that you can give a constructive response. Instead, all you have done here is to repeat something I already acknowledged, while completely ignoring the "however" part that explains my objection to your request. I never said that merging two articles isn't a problem, and in fact I acknowledged that it is.. But I am not going to repeat what I have already said five times now. When you care to respond to the points I raised to contest your position, then we can proceed. —Largo Plazo (talk) 22:44, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • What happens if you miss a potential title? You're talking about creating literally thousands of Google results with NO CONTENT.
  • Who gets to choose the eventual title? You? Wouldn't you need a reliable source to make that judgement? Why not just create the stub while you're at it? --King Öomie 20:43, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Who gets to choose is obvious: those who edit Wikipedia. And obviously it would be discussed like everything else. And what do you mean by "miss a potential title"? Do you mean: what if there's a page I could have created but didn't? If that's a problem, we're in big trouble. Very many Wikipedia pages could have been created and haven't been. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:59, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
"Thousands of useful redirects to non-existent pages could be created if it were allowed". Eh? Redirects are not useful if they direct to non-existent pages. And how does one determine what these hypothetical redirects would be, and to what non-existent pages they should direct? Michael, this proposal is dead, please drop the stick. Fences&Windows 21:10, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

"Fences", try being honest.

  • I explained how they are useful. Explicitly. If you disagree, give your arguments; don't lie and say nobody explained how they're useful.
  • I created hundreds of such redirects during 2002&ndash2005. How one determines what they should be is obvious to anyone who gives it a moment's thought, and I already explained that above!
  • Why should regard the fact that someone who behaves like "Fences" urges me to drop the matter as cogent, when he's unwilling to know the answers to his questions that I already answered above? Why do so many purported arguments here have to consist only of such abuse rather than of arguments? Michael Hardy (talk) 21:56, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that your explanation makes sense to nobody but yourself, and you haven't (to anyone's satisfaction) responded to continued requests that you clarify your position. Hence, everyone's continued insentience that you actually explain how broken redirects are helpful. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:01, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm being very honest. I totally fail to see the use of redirects to non-existent pages. They are navigation pages, and would navigate to... nowhere. Not only are you proposing that we leave redirects in place when a page is deleted, but you're also proposing creating redirects in anticipation of the creation of hypothetical articles. I cannot see the sense in this proposal. Fences&Windows 22:46, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
He did explain it, and I understood it: he feels that if an article is deleted as a copyvio, there's somehow a good chance that someone else will create a proper article with that title, and that therefore if those redirects to the original article are still there, they will then prevent other people from accidentally creating alternative articles on the same topic but with different titles. What I explained to him three or four times now (and he seems not to be interested in countering my argument) is that this is no different from the case where the article hadn't been created in the first place, and therefore the redirects had never been created in the first place. Yes, on Wikipedia it is possible for multiple people to create articles with slightly different names on the same topic. Yes, when it happens, it needs to be dealt with. No, leaving existing redirects there when their target is deleted is not going to solve that problem; at most, it solves a very tiny percentage of it, and it replaces it with the broken redirects, which themselves are a problem. —Largo Plazo (talk) 22:09, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Largoplazo, you misrepresent my position. This is not about articles deleted for copyright violations; it's about non-existent articles that ought to exist. It's not about deleted articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:55, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

The Google argument is specious because Google can easily adjust its software to recognize pre-emptive redirects and ignore them in rankings. Or ranking them at 10000th out of 10000, where no one ever looks anywhere. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:05, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Why is Google responsible for adjusting its software to solve a problem that you want to create? —Largo Plazo (talk) 22:09, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
They probably don't need to, but if necessary they should because they're Google and that's what they've undertaken as their mission.
It's Google's mission to make special provision in their software for the anomalous outcome of some peculiar preference of a guy named Michael Hardy? —Largo Plazo (talk) 03:04, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Is there any truth in the assertions above about Google? Do redirects to nonexistent pages actually appear in Google searches? If so do they appear among the high-ranking hits, or so far down that no one would notice them? How does anyone know? Aren't those assertions about Google just fiction? Michael Hardy (talk) 23:45, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I invite Largoplazo to stop being sarcastic

I believe I've done more Wikipedia edits and created more Wikipedia pages than anyone else in this discussion. I didn't just come here to get beat up on. AFTER I pointed out that the reason redirects to non-existent pages rarely exist is this bad policy that disallows their existence, Largoplazo again reiterates that this is unimportant BECAUSE SUCH REDIRECTS BARELY EXIST. I created hundreds of them during 2002–2005. I am entitled to Wikipedia's gratitude for that. Largoplazo first destroys them, then says I shouldn't complain about that because they don't exist (any longer, he should have added). Michael Hardy (talk) 06:42, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, once again that isn't what I said. And besides that, you expect gratitude for your creation of hundreds of inappropriate articles, all of them deleteable under WP:CSD, the majority of which would never serve any purpose but taking up space? —Largo Plazo (talk) 14:42, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
They were not deletable under the policies of the time, and the present purported policy, dating to the spring of 2005, was not put there via a proper process of consensus. And I explained that they serve a purpose. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:18, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Testing the water

Is there anyone genuinely concerned about this problem aside from Michael Hardy? Protonk (talk) 22:16, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

No. He fails to grasp that the "problem" is only a very small part of a more general problem that is a fact of the way Wikipedia works and that can't be solved by worrying about it only in the context of articles that have been deleted, and he fails to grasp that the problem his "solution" causes cancels out any benefit it might convey. —Largo Plazo (talk) 22:46, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
No. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:52, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Nope--Jac16888Talk 23:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • No. A perennial complaint by Michael that consistently stirs up a little drama for a short time, but routinely goes nowhere because there is no support. older ≠ wiser 00:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
    • That is incorrect. It goes nowhere because the bug hasn't been fixed. Links to redirects with non-existent pages appear as blue links. They should appear as red links. That's pending on bugzilla. After it's fixed I will propose a policy change. I did not propose a change in this thread, but only commented on the situation, because the bug hasn't been fixed yet and there can be no real discussion until it is (maybe that's why, other than the two rational objections that have been expressed, we see so many irrational objections). Michael Hardy (talk) 03:31, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Who says it's a bug and that it will be "fixed"? Did you post this "bug"? Do you realize it would mean that two extra steps would be necessary to determine the color of every link? Right now, all that needs to be determined is whether there is an article by the name in the wikilink. To "fix" this "bug", the server would need to determine if the article exists and if so whether it's a redirection and if so whether the article it redirects to exists. —Largo Plazo (talk) 05:11, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I can compile a list of 10000 people who don't care if Wikipedia continues to exist. Therefore it should be abandoned. Protonk asked for those who are concerned to step forward and list themselves here. So those who are not concerned list themselves here, and that means something? What about my list of 10000 people who don't care if Wikipedia exists? And Largoplazo used his entry here for the purpose of giving arguments. If you do that, then counterarguments must be admitted as well, especially since he lies when he says I think this should be solved "by worrying about it only in the context of articles that have been deleted". That statement, quoted, is dishonest. And Largo's statement that nobody cares presupposes that Largo knows that nobody cares. Obviously this present page is not the best place to look for those who care. And people have expressed to me their agreement with this point on other pages. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:51, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Wow. Nowhere above did I say anything resembling "nobody cares". And the portion of your message just above that begins, "he says I think this should be solved" is a thorough distortion, and reflects a complete misunderstanding, of what I said. I said that you are only worrying about the greater problem (the problem of multiple articles being created on the same topic), which applies to every article that might ever be created with more than one word in its title, in the context of a tiny percentage of instances of that problem that will ever occur (the cases where an article has been deleted and later is recreated), and that your "solution" would therefore do almost nothing to solve the problem. This is very different from your interpretation of what I said. You give the impression of not reading very well, or at least not very carefully, and it's no wonder, therefore, why your arguments with people go off in all directions without accomplishing anything. —Largo Plazo (talk) 02:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I added the section because you have a history of agitating non-problems on WT:CSD well past their sell by date. I'm not likely to offer it as a response to just any request for a change. Honestly a single editor besides you who sees this as a genuine and significant problem requiring the redress you mention would assuage my concerns. Protonk (talk) 02:31, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Being in agreement with most of those who have opposed this, I see two related potentials for harm from leaving these redirects to nonexistent article in place that I don't think anyone has mentioned, that would (also) outweigh any benefit. Redirects create the appearance of an article existing when linked in other articles. Thus, when someone comes along and slaps brackets around a potential subject and it turns blue, they may never check. That blue link should have been red, inviting creation. Similarly, a newish user attempting to make an article who finds themselves at a redirect page may never create the article. Sure, us experienced users would just edit the redirect into the page, but a new user may not faced with this weird (to them) code. "I want to create X but there's a redirect there, what do I do" is not an uncommon question at the help desk.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:14, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Rational and irrational objections to my comments

I have not yet proposed changing the purported policy stated on this page, but rather only made some comments on why it's a bad thing. I'm waiting for a bug fix so that the discussion can begin.

Two objections to my comments have some cogency:

  • Links to redirects to non-existent pages appear as blue links, creating a false impression that an article exists, thereby causing those who might create the article not to do so. That is a pending bug on Wikipedia's bugzilla. They should appear as red links, making clear that no article really exists.
  • The "Google objection", which is specious when examined. It is claimed (but I suspect false) that redirects to non-existence targets appear in Google searches. If true, I'd guess they appear on about the tenth page of the list of hits, where no one ever looks. Google is not a bunch of idiots; they are capable of dealing with the feared problem and probably already have. If they haven't, one should expect it of them since that's obviously part of their chosen mission. A tiny problem. Does anyone have any specific evidence that redirects with non-existent targets appear as Google hits, or is that fiction?

Other objections above make no sense:

  • The problem is allegedly rare. Is it? That's because those taking one side in this issue have coercively made it rare. Like saying "I don't think we should change the rule excluding Negroes from membership in this club because they never apply anyway." (The reason they never apply is the rule proposed to be changed.)
  • Millions or billions of people can be listed who don't care about it. Great. Millions or billions of people don't care if Wikipedia exists. So lets abandon it. But first, let's take a complete census of those who don't care about this point and post it on this discussion page, because that means something.
  • There is allegedly no reason why anyone would want such redirects. That one isn't even honest. I've stated the reasons. They're here on this page.
  • "Who would decide what the content of such pages should be; what they should redirect to?" Sheesh. Obviously those who edit Wikipedia.
  • There might be some pre-emptive redirect that we'd forget to create. Let's abolish everything that's not omniscient and infallible.
  • "We can always merge long articles with each other; that takes no effort or time that might be spent on other things." Do I need to explain why that is incorrect?
  • Some people have objected to positions I haven't taken. E.g. someone claimed I think a page deleted as a copyright violation is likely to be recreated. That's nonsense. I had in mind pre-emptive redirects to non-existent pages, not redirects to formerly existent pages.

After the bug fix I will actually propose a policy change rather than merely commenting on why the present purported policy is bad. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Bugzilla link, please. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
bugzilla:378. Algebraist 14:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Michael Hardy, could you give us a few examples of such redirects that you would want to create? I fail to see the actual problem, but sometimes examples can be helpful to change one's mind. Fram (talk) 10:31, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm about done with your extremely defensive attitude. You've made your point- according to that bugzilla link, you've been pushing this issue for four years with no success. Staunchly Oppose the removal or weakening of CSD criteria G8 at this time. If there's no other business, let's move on. --King Öomie 14:11, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Öomie, I haven't been "pushing" the issue, but rather I've mostly been waiting. I haven't yet proposed the change here on this page because the but isn't fixed. Within the past 48 hours, Jimbo has asked one of the software people to look into it.
As for my "defensive attitude", I am certainly surprised by all the hostility. I wonder if that just goes along with pages more concerned with legalistic matters than with content.
Conclusions like yours are premature for a proposal that hasn't been made yet and that you haven't had an opportunity to read.
And it's criterion G8, not criteria G8. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:05, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Speculative redirect scenarios

Scenario 1

User 1 creates the following speculative redirects to an article about a company, X y z:

User 2 decides to write an article on the topic, which is correctly named X Y Z Enterprises.

Now we have two redirects that either (a) are permanently broken or (b) will "invite" someone to create X y z about the same company.

—Largo Plazo (talk) 15:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Scenario 2

User 1 creates the following speculative redirects to an article about a company, X y z:

User 2 comes across X Y Z and says, "This redirect is bad. If someone were to write an article about it, the correct name for the article would be XYZ Enterprises. I'm going to change the redirect to lead there." So now the two redirect pages lead to two different non-existent pages.

—Largo Plazo (talk) 15:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Scenario 3

User 1 creates the following speculative redirects to an article about a company, X y z:

But the actual name of the company is XYZ. So when user 2 comes along, and finds XYZ, he removes the redirect and adds content. We now have a situation like the one at the end of Scenario 1.

—Largo Plazo (talk) 15:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Scenario 4

User 1 creates the following speculative redirects to an article about a company, X y z:

User 2 comes along and wants to create speculative redirects to an article about the same company, but he supposes that the actual article will be called X Y Z Enterprises. So he creates the following broken redirects that all lead there:

User 3 comes along and thinks the name of the company is X.Y.Z Enterprises, and creates the following redirects to a page having that name:

Now we have three sets of redirects leading in three different directions, "inviting" the creation of three articles on the same company.

—Largo Plazo (talk) 15:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Scenario 4a

Start with scenario 4, and add the happenstance that the company changes its name to The Foobar Group before someone finally writes an article on it.

—Largo Plazo (talk) 15:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Conclusion

(Conclusions, anybody?) —Largo Plazo (talk) 15:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Conclusion is that G8 is perfectly reasonable in both its wording and implementation at this time, and that the cons of broken/speculative redirects far outweigh the benefits- which can easily be made moot by the same habit of users not utilizing the Search feature that necessitates using Article Merge even today? --King Öomie 18:18, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Bottom-line conclusions are premature because the bug isn't fixed yet. However, Largoplazo's examples show that the problem would not be COMPLETELY eliminated, but of course it's hard to imagine anyone thinking it would. Pre-emptive redirects would cut down the potential number of duplicates, but as Largoplazo demonstrates, it could never fully eliminate them. The more typical situation is that there's one commonplace misspelling or misnomer or alternative name, and this takes care of the problem in most such cases. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:58, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Thought regarding efficiency

If someone were really concerned about avoiding article duplication, scanning [WP:Special/NewPages]] for actual, existing, not-likely-to-be-deleted pages to create preemptive redirects for would be a much more effective way of achieving that goal than the scattershot creation of broken redirects for articles that may never exist while, at the same time, defeating the purpose by risking scenarios like the ones I gave above. —Largo Plazo (talk) 20:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

One of the flaws of that idea is that it would only be done by those who had already decided to take an interest in it; it has no mechanism for calling the situation to the attention of those who are interested in the subject matter of the articles but have not noticed this particular problem. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

A7 is highly prone to subjective interpretation and hence abuse

From its early times the idea of speedy deletion is to deal with clean-cut non-controversial cases of jokes, vandalism, tests and vanity.

Application of the A7 criterion requires a serious judgement, but formulated extremely vaguely. "No indications of importance": what the hell is it supposed to mean? Does an article have to contain a sentence "this guy is important because he released three studio albums" or just listing the studio albums is enough? This is not a joke question: this is an issue with recently speedied article. WP:Notability has clear criteria and requires afd deliberation. This one is open to whatever like or dislike of a single admin. - Altenmann >t 18:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

To be precise, it requires one person to tag, and a reviewing admin to delete, assuming no others have reviewed and removed the tag in the interim. I'm fairly comfortable with it, and honestly, if we removed or downsized A7, AfD's already-stressed load would rapidly become completely unmanageable. It's been a while since I did Newpage patrol from the front (as opposed to the rear) of the queue, but A7 is Wikipedia's first and most heavily used line of defense against vanity articles on subjects of no importance. RayTalk 18:31, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I understand that. However IMO the criterion should be (a) split into cases and (b) each case must be elaborated. For example, for a person it should state something like "a person did nothing of interest for general public as recored in reliable sources" or something like this. IMO the major AfD load is not really nonnotable items (they are painlessly !voted out in seconds per voter). The real pain in the ass are marginally notable ones who laborously work their case up so that after first reading you will believe they are second Frank Sinatra or Lady Macbeth. - Altenmann >t 19:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
"the major AfD load is not really nonnotable items" - that's because so many of them are handled by A7. Reducing the usage of A7 could easily double the number of articles sent to AFD every day. Mr.Z-man 21:22, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
It means if anyone objects, you likely did it wrong. But it doesn't mean if nobody objects you did it right, it may mean both the nominator and the deleting admin subconsciously applied WP:BUREAUCRACY + WP:IAR while at the same time subconsciously forecasting WP:SNOW at the WP:AFD had they gone there rather than WP:PROD. "Good judgment" in CSD is not necessarily did you interpret A7 to the letter, but did you interpret A7 in a way that will raise no objections.
In practical terms, A7 should not be used if:
  • There is any claim that the author might see as a credible claim of importance, without showing first why this claim is in fact not a claim of importance or is not credible. This requires putting yourself in the author's shoes, which is probably not a bad idea in general.
  • The nature of the subject suggests it would not be too hard to find a credible claim of importance by spending 60 seconds on Google or a similar research tool, unless such a search has been tried without finding anything.
In these cases, PROD is usually better, but AFD may be better in certain cases if the PROD is likely to be contested or if it's important to have the community voice speak out and say "this topic is not notable." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The best thing would probably not be changing or removing A7 but to educate admins. The best way to achieve your suggest, Altenmann, would probably be a subpage of CSD with elaborated examples. There are some of those in essay form already (I collected a number at WP:A7M for example) but currently there is no consensus on such examples, which is probably one of the reasons for the "vagueness" you mention. Regards SoWhy 19:31, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Except that most admins don't need educating, they're quite capable of evaluating articles through their own thought processes. If there are particular admins that are regularly ignoring the CSD criteria on article which aren't clearly unencyclopedic then that needs to be brought up elsewhere (on their talkpage, followed by RFCU) - not here. Black Kite 19:45, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. Unfortunately, the small minority of admins who make such mistakes are the same that are responsible for those complaints we hear all the time about frequent mistakes with speedy deletion. So of course the "educating" suggestion I made was only meant for those admins, not all admins. Regards SoWhy 21:02, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with A7. Yes it is open to interpretation, but so are most things. If the creator, tagger, and admin fail, there is always the article request option, or if the article is incorrectly deleted, the admin can be contacted, and if that avenue fails there's the notice board. While not all editors will be aware of this process, ignorance of the bureaucracy cannot be the reason to change policy. Change policy sake because no one reads it is very counter productive. Mkdwtalk 21:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm growing skeptical of calls for bright line rules meant to protect newbies. We have a veritable forest of rules and provisos which have eclipsed simple but vague guidelines in the interests of eliminating possible abuse. And what do we get from it? Complicated processes, arcane rules, and self perpetuating struggles over who can be more rule-bond. And these rules were not instituted to protect the encyclopedia from outsiders but to legislate away the possibility that some poor admin speedy the next Mzoli's Meats. All we are left with longer rulesets which present an ever growing barrier to entry for new editors. A7 needs to be made simpler, not more complicated. Protonk (talk) 21:31, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Problem is, the case where a potential article has been speedied (and driven off an editor) is not that uncommon - I have stumbled over a few when i noted previous deleted material at Pandorea pandorana and Jagera to name two. I agree simplicity is good though. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I agree neither of those should've been speedied (one wasn't even tagged). I note that one of them was tagged by a serial bad tagger. Black Kite 22:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Well I think we need to distinguish between bad speedies and incorrect speedies. A speedy deletion that meets the criteria can still be 'bad', if the editor is pushed away due to brusque or unpleasant taggers/admins. Likewise, an incorrect speedy may not cause a prospective editor to leave (or they would have left regardless), if the basic merits of the deletion are ok. But we lose more broadly when focusing on rules themselves and relying on those rules to protect us from abuse--the rules become paramount rather than incidental. Though I do agree that we tag articles when we shouldn't (for all of its shortcomings, WP:NEWT did hint at a rather higher false positive rate than we would like). Protonk (talk) 22:49, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem with A7 is not so much the way it's worded as the way some (not sure if it's a minority or a majority) admins apply it. To me, the test for A7 is "could I see some possible way that a new editor, not familiar with Wikipedia, could in good faith think this person is important enough for an encyclopedia article?" So the article "Julie is a cool girl at my school" is an A7 candidate; "Julie is world famous for her blog" is not. Even this interpretation isn't perfect (the first Julie might be an Olympic athlete), but most new editors can understand that they need to give at least some clue as to what's important about the person. (Also a good reason not to tag for speedy just minutes after creation.)--Fabrictramp | talk to me 23:25, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I've said it before and well, here it is again. The problem is not with the criteria because no matter how much we word them to be restrictively worded and objective (without defanging them), the majority of bad deletions are by a limited subset of admins who don't care what the policies say or are lacking some spark of discriminating ability to ever apply them properly. If we want to get rid of that majority, the answer is something like this: Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 36#CSD log, and will not be addressed in any real way by any further tweaks to the criteria.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:02, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree with the OP that A7 is fundamentally flawed and should be repealed; assertions of significance are often implicit and may require special knowledge to evaluate, even for the restricted topic areas listed in that criterion. However, since it is the most commonly used criterion, such a motion would never gain support without something to replace it, and I really have no idea what that would be. Dcoetzee 00:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed that A7 seems to be, by far, the most misused speedy deletion criterion, and more pages are mistakenly tagged or deleted under it than any other. However, it is also the most frequently used criterion, so to a certain extent that's understandable. Nonetheless, even given the larger numbers involved, A7 probably has a higher proportion of bad tags than the other criteria. (That's an anecdotal assumption - it would be useful for someone to do the research to see if it is actually true.) Additionally: the value of speedy-deleting an article, compared to deleting it through PROD or AFD, is not that great (except in urgent cases, which generally don't come under A7); but the cost of mistakenly deleting a valuable article is significant, and if that's a common occurrence it's a serious problem. Personally then, I think the existence of A7 is probably doing more harm than good. Robofish (talk) 01:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The problems with prod and AfD are that the same people who make A7-deletable articles are also likely to remove prods, making the prod process fail, and AfD takes the time and effort of many more people. So, given the daily volume of A7 deletions, I don't think that just removing A7 and replacing it by prod and AfD is an adequate solution. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:39, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Please notice that the sheer amount of scd-tagged pages aggravates the problem. As I see it happens that an admin takes a big mop and goes through the whole category. It is a psyscological thing that when you see a huge number of items to be processed, you tend to spend less on thinking and evaluating.

Is A7 a special case, to be treated in a special way?

It seems that most people taking part in this discussion agree that A7 stands out for various reasons. Why don't we design for it a special tag, which combines features of prod, ({{notability}}), and CSD. Namely:

  1. It gives 2 timeouts to fix the problem:
    1. First timeout (2 days) is for a promise to fix, i.e., for {{hangon}}-tagging (respecting the creator's real life outside wikipedia)
    2. Second timeout (+2 days) for actual fix (If the subject is notable, how hard it would be to find 2-3 refs in google? We are not looking for a perfect article)
  2. If applicable, it directs to the corresponding WP:NOTE subpage to give a hint what and how to be fixed. It must include demand for sources, so that

"Jane is a girl with the most bestest blog" will not go.

  1. If the problem is not fixed to admin's satisfaction by the deadlines, it may be speedied.

Something like this already works for images which have problems with copyright/permission.

A possible option is to split A7 into A7hopeless and A7curable:

  1. A7H: No argumented and potentially verifiable indications of accomplishments or distinctive features: "Jane is a cool girl with the largest boobs ever"
  2. A7C: "According to the Cupertino Union School District newsletter, Jane is a cool girl with the best blog". This case still seems hardly notable, but now it is a candidate for AfD (provided that the requested refs are provided), since it is up to the wikipedian community to decide the threshold of the notability of a blogger: is is a school district, a county, or a state, or may be Cupertino Union School District merely refers ho her recognition by nation-wide media.

Just the ideas, for starters. - Altenmann >t 17:37, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

In my experience {{db-nocontext}} is probably the CSD category with the highest proportion of rescuable articles. A7 may have the largest number of incorrect tags, but there are also lots of correct A7s, and many of the incorrect ones are articles that are deleted or barely kept at AFD. I do think we need radical change at New Page Patrol, but I wouldn't focus on just A7. ϢereSpielChequers 18:21, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

IAR in CSD

As I see in some sections above, people tend to agree that WP:IAR is applicable to CSD as well (of course, as any IAR usage, it must be exercised with extreme caution). The whole idea of CSD is to prevent wasting people's time for non-controversial case in discussions/votes. Bearing the latter point in mind, I would suggest to add the rule that if a page was IAR-CSD-deleted, and another admin disagrees (and expressly insists after a possible exchange of arguments), the deleting admin has to restore it, without going thru the hassle of Deletion Review. As we know, deletion review is to verify whether the deletion rules were observed, so IAR should not be handled there.

This rule may seem unnecessary, but it will help to painlessly handle and avoid the following cases (we are all, including admins are human):

  1. The second admin restores the page with comment "Deleted out of process"
  2. The second admin is unwilling to confront the first one without the rule to back him, so it goes to the DR page
  3. The first admin is strong-headed and/or strong-armed (sorry colleagues, but this happens. May be not a lot, but black cats and eyesores are quite visible.)
  4. ...

While the suggestion looks like a wheel war, it is not, since it involves a dialogue. Altenmann >t- Altenmann >t

  • Just posting to note the irony of a rule about IAR. Protonk (talk) 18:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
    • He-he, IAR is a rule, hence is also ignorable by its own force :-) - Altenmann >t 18:11, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
      • Before this reaches dizzying heights, I should mention that practice is (AFAIK) best explained as very rare IAR speedies. Where IAR becomes a common speedy reason for an admin (either explicitly or implicitly), they tend to lose the tools (MZMcBride being a relatively recent example). I don't see a good reason to create a new apparatus for IAR deletion "reviews". Protonk (talk) 18:23, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
        • I am not suggesting a new "apparatus". My suggestion was aimed to decrease the amount of drama around IAR. However on the second thought, I may see that my suggestion could encourage IAR-CSD, which is not good. - Altenmann >t 18:52, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I would oppose this in any event, but the vast majority (I would estimate 98%) of IAR deletions are people pretending an article fits under a criterion it does not instead of invoking IAR as they should. This would miss all of those articles so it would not be practical.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:45, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Expansion of A7

What are the thoughts about expanding A7 to include software? The wording now proscribes "web content" which is left undefined. This leads us to delete website article but keep articles on iPhone apps (for a simplified comparison), despite all characteristics of the two being identical. Current wording is:

An article about a real person, individual animal(s), an organization (e.g. band, club, company, etc., except schools), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion applies only to articles about web content and to articles about people, organizations, and individual animals themselves, not to articles about their books, albums, software, or other creative works. The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source. The criterion does apply if the claim of significance or importance given is not credible. If the claim's credibility is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, or list the article at articles for deletion.

Any thoughts on how to update the criteria without making it even longer and more complex? (Also, I'm sure this has come up plenty of times. I don't think this expansion is controversial, but I'm prepared to offer justification as needed if there is opposition) Protonk (talk) 23:26, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

  • There's a definite need for this; articles on types of software which assert no notability are flooding PROD and AfD because they don't qualify for A7, as they are not web content. I suspect there would be broad support for this expansion. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 00:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm far from convinced, based from the evidence at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Software over the past several months, that a claim of significance (not notability, which is not and has never been what A7 is about) is a useful predictor for whether an article would be kept at AFD, or whether most editors would recognize a legimitate claim. Would you speedy this? This? This? I see nothing in any of them that would stave off an A7 (perhaps, generously, the claim that getopt is a GNU library would, but that's both misleading at best and not why it's notable at all) and all were kept unanimously at their AFDs. Those examples are what I found in five minutes of inspecting Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Software's history; if desired, I can find many, many more. I don't disagree that there should be a speedy deletion criterion for software, but I don't think A7 is it. —Korath (Talk) 01:55, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I think you would have to convince me that a hypothetical software A7 is more likely to be wrong than a website or book A7. Applied broadly, A7 is both helpful and dangerous (because things can be notable without being significant), but applied narrowly it is almost entirely dangerous. I think that we probably won't get consensus for a whole other category, so would we be better off in the net shoehorning software into a7 or not? Protonk (talk) 02:29, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Books aren't A7s, and most people have a good feel for what might make a website important or significant. This is not true of software. (I don't consider the fast inverse square root algorithm insignificant, by the way, but then, I'm a game programmer.) Would you like me to produce AFD discussions ending in keep where A7 was specifically called for? I can do so; I've seen multiple examples scroll through my watchlist. I admittedly don't watch prod, so maybe the situation is different there, but I don't see the overwhelming precedent for deletion at AFD called for by the Uncontestability guideline.

        I'd much rather see G11 used more liberally. There's a self-evident COI present in most properly A7able articles and most articles that would be included in various proposed expansions to A7; there's usually an overly promotional tone in cases of software and other products; and for software in particular, COI has been a much better predictor of deletion at AFD than claims of importance. —Korath (Talk) 03:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose expansion This has been suggested time and time again and every time it was rejected for very good reasons. Neither do such articles come up often enough for PROD or AFD not to be able to handle it nor is this an area where we should trust a single admin to decide. Software is a complicated field and many software products are hard to source but still notable since they are specialized. The reason A7 includes websites is because that is one thing people like to write about often. Software on the other hand is like books, a complex outcome of a creative process and should not be put in A7 categories. There simply is no need to do so and such a change would make thousands of potentially good articles be A7 deletable (and you can bet on some admin deleting them without much thought). Regards SoWhy 07:54, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Well, its just going to become much more common over the next few years. How many iPhone or android apps are we going to send to AfD before we can speedy the obvious ones (apart from the ones currently speedied as web content) And TBH we the strange specificity of A7 tends to lead admins and taggers astray from the letter of the law. We include real persons but not fictional persons, animals (Tell me we have a surfeit of animal articles), organizations but not buildings, school districts but not schools, and web content but not software (or even software meant for web delivery). I'm not sure your "creative energy" test applies consistently across these. It seems plain to me that we have cobble together a catch-all criteria for common items which are not likely to ever be good encyclopedia subjects but are otherwise innocuous. That's well and good but we have to come clean about it. Our reasoning for inclusion on this list should be a balance between relieving pressure on AfD and avoiding spurious tagging, subject to some constraint regarding readability. Protonk (talk) 09:25, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
      • I argued against that animal-expansion for the same reasons, unfortunately (from my POV), consensus was in favor of it anyway. I agree that such things should handled somehow but a.) we should deal with problems when they happen, not change policy because there might be an increase of such articles and b.) it could be handled without expanding A7 to all software (as decltype points out, that is a large and complicated field) by changing "web content" to "web or mobile related content" or similar. CSD is specifically designed to be as strict as possible and to limit it to cases where AFD/PROD cannot handle it because removal of content is BITEy and mistakes can be easily made if only one or two sets of eyes look over it. Yes, it might be more comfortable to have A7 cover software and/or other subjects as well but CSD is not created to replace deletion discussions completely but to remove those few kinds of subjects which are, due to human nature, created in far too large quantities for discussions to handle. Software currently is not one of them. On a side note, considering the amount of software related articles that are in a bad shape but fixable (in my experience, about 25-50% of software articles that go to AFD are kept), adding software to A7 would probably create a huge wave of taggings of such articles and probably, since some admins are not good at CSD, a huge amount of deletions, thus removing valuable information for no other reason than that those articles don't include sentences like "this software is important because...". Regards SoWhy 20:19, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I'll generally look at applying G11 or A1 in cases like this. Personally, I'd be all for A7 simply stating "An article which does not indicate the importance or significance of its subject", and ensure that an article answers that most basic of questions in journalism—"Why should I care?" I would certainly see this as a step in the right direction, though. I would disagree that this does not come up often, as I've seen many examples of non-notable software. Some are kept based upon liking it or knowing it, but I use and like many pieces of software that we probably don't have enough sourcing to write an article on. Asserting some type of significance should be a prerequisite for every article. Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:22, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support and support expansion (and integration of A9) to at least all products (including software), if not all content, failing to assert facts that (if true) would result in notability or provide reference indicating notability subject to modifications to the speedy process requiring any speedily deleted page (not discussing files here) other than pages deleted under G3, G4, G10, [G11?], and G12 be userfied on any request (not discretionary). The {{prod}} process is frequently thwarted (especially given the generally desirable policy—indeed a policy worthy of expansion to cover the speedy process—preventing renomination for proposed deletion), and AfD is extremely editor-time intensive. Given the ease of recreation in this alternative, the amount of total editor and administrator overhead for articles that really need to go to AfD would be de minimis, and the amount of overhead saved for uncontroversial content would be substantial. Bongomatic 09:42, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It's simply too complex, I think. We do not have a guideline for software notability, I believe because people can't seem to agree what makes software notable. I see the same problem arise with software importance/significance for A7. Also, where does one draw the line for what actually constitutes software? For example, is there general agreement on which of the following would fall under the category "software", in an A7 context: libavcodec, DirectX, Standard Template Library, Technical Report 1, C Standard Library, Allocator (C++), Curiously recurring template pattern, Fast inverse square root? Proposed POINTy wording: (This includes computer programs distributed in executable form, or in a form suitable for execution by a software interpreter, software libraries [including libraries generally distributed as source code] and application programming interfaces, excluding interface and software component specifications, algorithm descriptions, programming language constructs, and software concepts, although a concrete implementation of an algorithm or interface specification is generally considered software.) decltype (talk) 09:14, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
    • All of them, as to which would be software. Those are low level software, but software nonetheless. As to what makes software notable, the answer to that is the same as anything else and may be found at the notability guideline. Even if there were a subguideline for software, like anything else, it couldn't override the requirement for multiple independent sources, only state when they're likely to be present. However, A7 sets a lower bar than being actually notable—it requires only that the article assert why the subject is important or significant to prevent speedy deletion. If a reasonably plausible assertion of significance is made, A7 cannot apply. But I do agree on complexity, and sometimes fuzzy interpretation, which is why I'd like to see A7 just reworded to say "An article which does not assert why its subject is important or significant", no subject restrictions. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:59, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
      • I disagree that everything I listed should be considered software, in the (hypothetical) context of speedy deletion. This document is not software, neither is chapter 7 of this one. Of those I listed, some are programming concepts or abstract specifications of algorithms. Quicksort, then? Subset sum problem? There has never been consensus to speedy such things, and I hope it never will be. I see the addition of the word "software" to criterion A7 as a clear step in that direction. decltype (talk) 07:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose as written. "Software" is too vague for the type of articles that we should be looking to speedy. Certain types of computer software may be notable even if the notability is not asserted in the article. Yes, there are many nonnotable pieces of software out there, but the only way to check is to run some searches and put it up for AfD if they come up lacking. Does anyone know what percentage of software AfD's are kept versus deleted? Does the community have a strong consensus in these debates, or do many close as no consensus? We shouldn't implement a speedy criteria unless there is a strong consensus that a certain type of article needs to be taken care of without debate, and I'm not convinced that we are swarmed with incoming articles about nonnotable software programs as we are with (for example) bands. If there isn't a problem we shouldn't be looking for a solution. ThemFromSpace 07:46, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I haven't "written" anything. I'm putting a call out for wording or general feedback. All I'm trying to do here is look forward over the nexy few years when we will find more and more iPhone apps and webgames which are neither fish nor fowl. Obviously this raises the specter of deletion for some open source programs and libraries (which we have a soft spot for), but that is a relatively minor problem. Protonk (talk) 19:58, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
      • If in a few years we get flooded with iphone apps and webgames then perhaps we should look at a new speedy criteria. I don't think we should be proactive in creating speedy criteria like this unless there is an existing problem. ThemFromSpace 04:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support I don't have stats, but software spam is a major recurring problem at AFD, and these debates usually fall into two categories: deleted after one or two "delete per nom" type replies, after multiple relistings, or deleted/very rarely no-consensus after the ARS swoops in and drops random (usually insignificant and trivial) mentions in sources like unpublished master's theses in foreign languages and the like, which waste enormous amounts of time, as editors then have to go and evaluate them. A7 serves a major purpose as a secondary spam-stopping criterion where G11 doesn't quite apply, where the goal of getting an article on Wikipedia is simply to promote by the mere fact of getting attention. RayTalk 17:41, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose - it is not reasonable to expect an admin to judge the "claim of importance" on software articles since, as pointed out above, there are many implicit claims of importance that wouldn't be recognized by someone unfamiliar with the subject. "Software spam" can already by handled by G11. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:46, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support Although I suppose a more liberal application of G11 could work in theory, in practice I'd feel uncomfortable tagging some of these articles with G11 when they aren't blatant advertising. I therefore support to help reduce the number of software articles at AfD. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 17:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose Experience has shown that for products of all types, it is necessary to propose them to the community--nothing i s more common than a totally inadequate article about one, for which it is very easy to find references. This is particularly true of software. The recent debates at AfD on software have shown that these deletions are strongly contested (they often lead to deletion, but by no means always) and that the people contributing the key information are not usually the ones who wrote the article. To say that software is part of a widely used operating system is to me a claim of importance--to others not--so this is not an unambiguous criterion. Why should we reduce the number of software articles at AfD, where they can be discussed properly? If we try to do it this way, it will just increase the work at deletion review. I note that some of the supports for this proposal are of the opinion that we should delete more software than we do, dismissing all attempts to improve the articles. I see this proposal as [possibly to some extent an end run around the lack of consensus that some of the articles find at AfD. Because they close as non-consensus even after a discussion, we should delete them as speedy? DGG ( talk ) 15:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Template to get 2nd opinion on marginal A7s and other marginal speedies

I've written User:Davidwr/db-2 as a template that non-administrators and administrators who think they have a conflict of interest can use to endorse a speedy tag where it's a marginal call or where the original speedy doesn't tell the whole story.

The intent is to:

  • cut down on the number of proper speedies that are declined in an abundance of caution that go to PROD, AFD/snow-delete, or worse, ignored and left alone.
  • give admins who prefer to use an abundance of caution confidence that another editor has looked at the item and endorsed the speedy deletion
  • give editors a way to add notes after the original speedy tag went up, such as noting that references turned out to be bogus

This will have a nice side-effect for future admin candidates in that their proper use of this will give evidence of their ability to make admin-level decisions at CSD.

I intend on using this at least a few dozen times in the coming week before stopping to assess its use. I will stop sooner if asked to or if this looks like it's not working out. Other editors are welcome to join in.

Because of the short-lived nature of this template, it is not necessary to subst: it - either it or the article should be deleted within a day. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:36, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments/Guinea Pigs
There used to be something similar called {{Dont Hangon}}, which was deleted at TfD. Tim Song (talk) 03:41, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • +1 Test subject with me. Been really looking forward to something like this. Let's see how it goes... hoping this should lean on the "how could it possibly hurt" end of the spectrum. A7s should remain low priority, but donthangon sounds good in theory. I worry that it makes things more subjective again, unless it had a requirement that a different editor than who added the CSD used it. For BLP stuff that has a hangon added there's always removing the uncited questionable info until it eventually gets handled. If it looks like AGF material a lot of new users say they even understand if you tell them you had to hijack their article for a bit and make a point of saying you have not deleted it. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 03:55, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Side note: I particularly appreciate the wording in the template of "another editor" vs admin because that could just add to confusion and forget that plenty of CSD powerhouses are just normal folk :) ♪ daTheisen(talk) 04:00, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

This was proposed multiple times if I remember correctly and consensus was that such a template is not necessary since unlike PROD, speedy deletion is not a substitution for a deletion discussion (hence the limited and strictly defined scope) and thus needs no consensus. If the article meets the criteria, it can be deleted and if it doesn't, it should not be deleted no matter how many people think it should be deleted. Such a template only serves to make the page more confusing for new editors while not adding anything of value ({{prod2}} on the other hand adds an element of community input that is usually needed to delete articles). More so, using such a template can be BITEy to the page creator who may feel that multiple editors are "ganging" up on them and who do not know that such a tag is completely irrelevant to the decision whether to speedy delete the article or not. I think that if you want to add a note about the speedy tagging, you should use the talk page instead. It's just as useful to get the admin's attention without the BITEy part of yet another tag on the article. And, call me an idealist, but an admin who is unsure whether to delete a page should simply decline the tag or leave it for another admin to decide. There is no need to re-assure them this way (and even if there was, it, again, could be done on the talk page). Regards SoWhy 07:46, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

That's completely valid and what the policy is intended to work under conditions for, but the range of subjectivity is just really large and (for me) this is at least a small step toward closing it a little. CSD is made to be deletion without consensus, but if there's no consensus on what grounds to decide from, it's being attacked from too many angles at once. I'm under the impression that nothing is ever actually more apt to a delete call by the admin because of this, but rather it's a place to demonstrate that someone has done some extra research cared to put the time in for assisting the admin. On a more questionable CSD would hopefully save the admin some time if they had a starting research point of a few key pieces of info that piece an article together in front of him/her. The goal isn't for patrols to fight over the CSD tag already there (conditions for objecting not changing and hopefully discussed first), and it's not to pile-on just because we could (doesn't happen with PRODs much, if ever). But, every time an editor comes and 2nds an iffy CSD with rationale or tips to admin it makes the A7 gray area a little narrower. Since incubation seems to have died long ago, we're still not actually at any CSD improvements after a frustrating month for the topic as a whole and a modest world media groan the past few days over exclusion issues in Wikipedia allegedly resulting in editors leaving, it's just more reminders to try things. *shrugs* Anything really, and things that require no changes to existing templates or written guidelines? Might as well try, so long as it's not declared harmful. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 17:59, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
CSD is not deletion without consensus, it is deletion per pre-defined consensus. The criteria are the consensus for the deletion of certain subjects, i.e. "we, the community, entrust you, the admins, to be allowed to delete all pages of the kind X if the requirements Y and Z are met". As such, there is no need to have further community input on individual pages in the form of a tag that says "I also think this page should be speedy deleted". I am all in favor of comments that help the admin make a better decision but they can be simply left on the talk page. Regards SoWhy 20:32, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Datheisen (talk · contribs) got it right when he said it makes the gray area a little narrower. Claim of importance, obvious hoax, and a few other CSD criteria by their very nature contain at least some room for interpretation. Looking at the discussion below, if I see "Dr. John Arbuckle is a professor of biology and is the president of GeniBeauty of Portland, Oregon" it helps in determining if this is a claim of notability if you know where he is a professor at and if his company is notable. "Dr. John Arbuckle is a professor of biology at Yale" may be deemed important while "Dr. John Arbuckle is a professor at Local Community College" may not be. If GeniBeauty is a Fortune 500 company that's much more likely to be considered a claim of importance than if it's a 3-man company founded last week. Yes, you could and usually should add this to the article or the article talk page, but a template is harder for a reviewing admin to miss. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:02, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I agree with SoWhy that there really is no need, however, I also agree with Datheisen about "how could it possibly hurt." I think this will be used in much the same way as prod2 - not neccessary but helpful. Although CSD uses predefined consensus, there is no reason a little oversight isn't helpful and this would help the patrolling admin know that oversight has been conducted and it is a safer delete.--TParis00ap (talk) 02:34, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
there are no marginal speedies. If an article is marginal or debatable, it is not a speedy. We have a perfectly good procedure for dealing with them, which is Prod. ` DGG ( talk ) 14:32, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Point well taken. I don't mean "iffy" literally in that someone is wobbling on whether it fits because or not, since that's just entirely awful in every way. More like, "iffy" in the sense that it's within the gray area between the editor and another's opinion. You can personally be dead-sure it's a CSD and it could still fit in a space that another experienced editor might think it's not. Hell, I'll tag sometimes even if I'm thinking "This might be dead wrong and denied I'd fight on my position to the death". Lo and behold, I'm wrong somtimes. Literally, the gray area. It happens. "Iffy" might also mean which category, like A7 G11 and G3 being close. As it is with reverting admin actions, I'd prefer to think AGF should be given to the original patrol unless there's substantial reason to think otherwise and might use some different methods in the process. Of course the tag is off with direct evidence, but I'm thinking it would act more like a third party view on a conflict (just more strict). A secondary check would also catch hangons immediately and could run through a more detailed investigation or get comment from the author, and a db-2 after that would particularly be useful I'd think. I guess "iffy" would also be better as a different word. Oops.
db-2 would/should only be added on the basis of total certainty after evaluation. If a deciding admin knows there were 2 completely certain views, that in and of itself creates a "white area" that shows consensus between patrols. A telling statistic might be what percentage of db-2'd are kept. ...Look, I know this assumes a lot of effort put into the things by patrols, but some of us do do this. It also assumes everyone would use this process at all so admins would know which weren't given a db-2, which is so not going to happen. Okay, filing under fantasy Wikipedia in back of mind.
I could say the same of theoretical "iffy" on some admin blocks. This is not true of all admins, of course, but many ask if they think one is appropriate or of a certain length. Isn't that quite important as well? Then there are obviously the controversial ones, and then there are the indefs appearing strangely on users with only a low-count of non-destructive edits with reason "vandalism only". Others might give a more detailed reason, which I assume is preferred. I raise an eyebrow but of course trust the lot of you. That's why you're there. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 01:04, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

New A10 question

I have a quick question about this new criteria, if I'm reading it right it looks an article like this, A brief history of the French language (see [[WP:PNT#Une Brève Histoire de la Langue Française for detail) would be a good candidate for this criteria. Am I right? I ask because we get a number of articles such as that at Pages needing translation, sometimes we just redirect them but in many cases the titles are too obscure for a redirect. Thanks--Jac16888Talk 11:23, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Based on your description I would say it is, but I don't speak French so there may be some other useful information that needs translating (hence page not A10able). \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 11:47, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, at least in my understanding of the rationale behind the new criterion. The foreign language may make it a bit hard to verify that the information is covered, though. However, this is also the case with foreign-language articles speedily deleted under different criteria. I also see that there's a need for a parameter in the template for specifying the existing article. decltype (talk) 11:49, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Might as well say it here, so a few more people know about it, but when there is a translation tag which specifies a language, as on the page linked above, the template includes a link to a google translation, which is generally enough to determine if an article is worth keeping--Jac16888Talk 11:53, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I do not think it is a suitable candidate. We often have summary articles as well as longer ones, and an attempt in good faith to introduce a summary article makes it not subject to A10, for it clearly was an attempt to improve the encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 14:20, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Experience I have so far seen at CAT:CSD 3 articles proposed for deletion via speedy using this criterion. While the criterion exists, I will of course, as an administrator, delete according to it when the article meets the requirements--as I think is my responsibility in general with respect to rules I am questioning. One, JD947 was exactly the kind of situation that this reason was designed for, being a copy of Y.E.S. 93.3FM without any apparent reason for a redirect, and I deleted it according to the criterion. A second, Word (language) was on a topic where we have a more sophisticated article, but it was not immediately clear whether there was not some information to be included. I declined it, and left a recommendation to merge; possibly there would not be anything worth merging, but it would take a careful reading by someone who knows the subject. The third was an article on a character in a show,Lucy Bennett where there is also a list of characters. The character for which the article was written is however not included in that list. It is therefore not a duplication of content, but needs to be merged. If it had been already there, with this article adding no more detail, then certainly this article would be unnecessary, but there would need to be a redirect, as is standard practice for fictional characters. Two wrong out of three is not all that good. Both of those two are cases which normally show up on PROD, and are best dealt with there , when some time can be taken. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs)

Professorship a credible criteria for avoiding speedy deletion

Please: It may or may not be a credible criterion; it's not "a criteria". Michael Hardy (talk) 22:09, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I've had 2 admins tell me that, while not specifically part of the criteria, being a professor is sufficient to avoid speedy deletion. Is this a widely held guideline? If so, this exception should be added to the A7 criteria similar to the way schools have been listed as an exception.--RadioFan (talk) 17:04, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Being a professor is a credible claim of importance/significance. Obviously the criteria cannot include everything that is considered such a claim, hence it's not included. I have collected a number of such indications of importance/significance at WP:A7M that I use when determining A7 (and that a number of other admins use as well). Regards SoWhy 17:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
(e/c)It's very difficult to explain why I think that this is a credible assertion, but it probably boils down to the amount of published work required to become a professor in UK universities. However, that may well not be the case in other universities around the world. GedUK  17:13, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
This is part of my logic. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:17, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
(e/c x2)This falls into the "use your own judgment" and "when in doubt, don't speedy unless required, e.g. attack, disparaging blp, copyvio, etc." If someone were a full professor at MIT, and it weren't written as a promotional piece or a fan piece, I would probably de-speedy it but might immediately prod or afd it. If they were a professor at a local junior college, I would probably not honor that as a claim of importance, as, well, it simply does not make you important just because you are Dr. Joe Smith, Ph.D., prof. of Mathematics at ACME Junior College. Other editors might honor that as a claim of importance. If it were written in a way or by an editor that suggested a conflict of interest I would probably be much more likely to leave an A7 speedy tag, but would probably not add one myself. Call this "silent endorsement" a special application of WP:IAR - I'm implicitly saying "db-reason|Almost speedyable on multiple criteria, will likely SNOW-fail at AFD, let's be merciful and get this over with quickly." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:17, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Note - before acting on a speedy in such a case, I would probably do a cursory search to see if any additional claims could be added to the article, or if this guy really is a nobody who somehow managed to attain professorship and hasn't retired yet. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:21, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
This drives me insane, because it can yank at both sides of your Wikipedia justice spectrum at the same time. On one hand, there's some article being put up which is clearly of acceptable quality and it doesn't have a single negative word in it or even misinterpret as such. On the other hand, the username of the author is the same as the article topic and you see all the references given are to books they're apparently written, and after running their name through Google you realize that 90% of the article is just the same words mixed around different than is seen on this person's faculty page for some university. Yay, all sorts of conflicts. #1) AGF it. Right. Seems like good intentions all around, and maybe I can tug out a few lines that are weasel-like or look like POV pushing in a sentence ending in a reference that's a link to buy their book on Amazon. That stuff we'd do on any article. #2) BLP it. Oh dear. This is the dark side of BLP no one ever likes to talk about... if "nice" or at least not instantly inappropriate states are not cited, then what? We want to believe them, it's a professor! What if it's a hoax replacement? I mean, low odds, but BLP, imo, should be applied on both ends of the spectrum, or at the very least "positive" articles shouldn't get a free pass because they appear to do no harm.
IMO, Anything BLP-related needs something to let it be kept. Only in extreme cases where there are no sources at all have I ever marked CSD an article like this, and that was only after the user didn't respond to my messages for clarification. I've also put the text in a collapsible box and put noindex in the edit source to "control" the unproven content for a few days. Extreme boasts and amazing-sounding claims need to be taken out of the article the same way a totally insulting lie would. Make the BLP at least "Kind of" work, since it would be rather unethical just to let this stuff go through without question. Put a COI template up until it gets a better working over. If the user is for real about who they say they are, they'll understand our policies with no trouble. WP:DUCK test is the only thing I at all trust here, sadly. Major university? Sources show particular importance in their field? If you can't find them on Google as an "expert" on something, you have a notability flag. At worst, if you really think the article needs to die, clean out any peacock or weasel words, any statements of awards or special achievements without citations, etc etc., same as any other BLP. Inform the user of the tiny shell of an article left that isn't in violation of everything Wikipedia, and there you go? Crude, but it beats PRODding it all if I'm iffy. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 18:44, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
What if he's dead. I wouldn't at all be surprised if professors who die while still teaching have fan clubs among their students or former students. Of course, some professors who are notable don't have pages, but after they die someone may create one about them. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:09, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • There is a general, and I believe fallacious, understanding that tenured professors are marginally notable. WP:PROF set a higher standard for notability, but A7 is supposed to be a lower bar. In my experience it is difficult to find biographical information on even fairly active professors who are not leaders in their field. This is doubly true for non-tenured (referring here to the US traditions of tenure) professors. Even those with a reasonable publication record will tend to have very little outside coverage, and for most cases, not be 'important' in the A7 sense. Protonk (talk) 20:20, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • How is saying, "X has a job teaching math to undergraduate students" any more an inherent claim of importance or significance than, "Y leads a team of software developers at company C"? Being a professor, without further qualification, is just a skilled job, one of thousands that people have, and need to impress a few people to get, without it being considered in inherent indication of significance or importance. More generally, I don't think any sentence of the form "Z is a (type of worker) ..." is an inherent claim of importance unless there's something particular distinctive about the type of worker involved: president of a country, CEO of a Fortunate 500 company, etc. —Largo Plazo (talk) 20:26, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
    This is part of why knowing the institution is important. If you know the institution doesn't grant full professorships to anyone but the best of the best, that may be a claim of importance. If you know they give all of their lecturers even those not on tenure track the title "professor," as you said, it's just a skilled job. If he's a professor on a deserted island, on the other hand, at least we know he didn't write the article himself. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:14, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • My two cents (which follows Largoplazo's point). If we have an article that essentially says "Person X holds a master's degree in education, and teaches mathematics at [notable highschool]" and nothing else, we would have no problem deleting the article on A7. So what is so different if the article essentially says "Person Y holds a Ph.D. in mathematics and teaches mathematics at [notable university]". If that's all it comes down to, A7 applies. If they are important in their field, hold an important chair, won an award, etc. (i.e., all the stuff WP:PROF says), then it's a different situation. But being a professor in and of itself should not be an automatic claim of importance or significance. Singularity42 (talk) 22:20, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Notable professors are not nearly as popular as their counterparts in other fields. For instance, I recently brought to AFD an article I could very well have speedied, the biography on Rudolf Yanson. But I didn't, because I knew that St. Petersburg was a major university, and that I wasn't in a position to summarily judge the significance of a prof there. I thought that, since all that the article said was that he was a professor (at the time), it deserved to be deleted, but professors are definitely a case where you probably have not heard of even the really good ones. As it turned out, I'm very glad I acted as I did, given the way that discussion went. Professors are definitely a case where the wise patroller should usually go for the PROD, not the speedy. RayTalk 23:33, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, Ray is making a very good point. What counts is what happens in the trenches of CSD, what is a good interpretation or criterion for separating the wheat from the chaff that we actually see. There just is not a deluge of articles on or by non-notable professors, and the articles that just say that the person is a prof (of whatever type) at some real college or university, although they may take real work to evaluate, have a much higher chance of being eventually kept at AfD than the average article being speedied. Not using it as an indicator of notability results in getting rid of a lot of potentially worthy articles. For example, I recall one autobiographical article by a comp sci prof at the U of Illinois (?) with a book with > 1000 gscholar cites that I later noticed was speedy-deleted, when I unexpectedly was called away from my computer.John Z (talk) 00:42, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Possible solution - lump professorship into most other "credible claims of importance" and put the burden on the tagger to show that the claim is either not credible or is not a claim of importance. Under this scheme, "Dr. John Doe is a professor at Smithtown College" would not be speediable unless someone did some research and found out that Smithtown College was indeed 4-year bachelors-degree-granting school but it had a poor reputation and is professors just had masters degrees. Or, for the sake of being extreme, someone found out Smithtown College was an unaccredited diploma mill and its "professors" were mail-room clerks with a fancy title. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:10, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
    • That's not really a solution, insofar as it doesn't align at all w/ any other A7 criteria and gets us right back to where we started: the unexamined assumptions surrounding academics and CSD. Let's imagine if these were hollywood agents or fish salespeople. We would (and do) delete their pages as promotion or at least beneath the status of the encyclopedia. But we don't for professors or colleges (referring here to sub-schools inside universities, e.g. Bendheim Center for Finance). Our CSD criteria (and analogously our notability criteria) should have some connection to how likely it is that an included subject could have a neutral, factual and (relatively) comprehensive article written about them. I don't see why we need to carve an exception out especially where that exception doesn't lead us to including subjects more likely to have sourcing. Protonk (talk) 01:29, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

On one hand, a claim of a professorship should be enough to disqualify CSD, because editors usually don't know that they need to cite specific things for WP:PROF. On the other hand, this particular article seems to be on a person who does not meet the inclusion standard, so I have proposed it for deletion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:21, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

It works like this

An article can't be deleted under A7 if it has a claim to notabilitym any claim to notability no matter how ridiculous you might think it to be. Professorship, even US professorship where any university lecturer can use the title (in Australia it is a title awarded to a minority of the faculty in recognition of the quality of their work) is a claim to notability the article can't be deleted under A7. ViridaeTalk 02:26, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

To be fair, "professor" is a limited title in the US as well; the majority of US academics as "assistant professors", "associate professors", or some sort of lecturer; "professor" is the top tier at all but the best institutions. However, we can't count on people who write stubs to get the job titles correct, since "professor" is also used as a generic term of address for all instructors. For example, in the article that started this thread, the original author got the job title wrong. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Viridae, the discussion is about whether mentioning that someone is a professor is to be treated as a claim of notability, and, if so, the extent to which it should be treated as such. Declaring your opinion that such a mention is an absolute claim of notability under the heading "It works like this", as though your opinion is fact and not subject to discussion, isn't helpful. Also you are wrong about one detail of A7: it applies to credible claims, and specifies that The criterion does apply if the claim of significance or importance given is not credible. —Largo Plazo (talk) 02:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
There are two elements to "credible claim of importance" - the claim must be credible, and the importance must be credible. "Janet is my mother" is a credible claim and, while the position as "mom" is very important to me, the claim of importance is zilch on Wikipedia. Professors sit somewhere between "my mom" and "the President of my country" in the wiki-importance scale. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Saying someone is a professor is an implicit claim that WP:PROF applies, which is a credible claim that the article meets our inclusion criteria. The same would be true if some article said "XXX is a professional footballer"; the credible claim there is that WP:ATHLETE applies. Such claims should be handled via PROD or AFD; A7 is not intended to cover them. "Credible" does not mean "accurate". — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:07, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
No, it does not. In order for it to do so, WP:PROF would have to add "has a tenure or tenure-track faculty teaching position at an accredited 4-year or graduate college, university, or similar institution," which for all intents and purposes is what a professor is. The bar for WP:PROF is higher than this. Now, the bar for importance for speedy is lower than the bar for notability, but whether it is above or below the definition of professor is what we are trying to hash out here. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:28, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Considering that most full professors and many associate professors are notable, I would certainly say that being a professor is a credible claim that the subject may meet our notability guidelines and thus is not speedyable. --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:14, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
CBM: the reasoning in your first sentence is like saying, "Saying someone is an entertainer is an implicit claim that WP:ENTERTAINER applies, which is a credible claim that the article meets our inclusion criteria." —Largo Plazo (talk) 06:06, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
An article that only says "XXX is an entertainer" needs to be researched before it is deleted. Sometimes adding more information to an article makes it more clear the article is a speedy deletion candidate. Saying "XXX is an entertainer in a garage band that is planning to release its first album in 2012" is very different than just saying "XXX is an entertainter". An article which says "Jim Smith is an assistant professor at South Central Directional State College" is not the same as an article which only says "Jim Smith is a professor". So I don't think professors are special in any way; the point is that "is a professor", "is a footballer", "is a singer", when no additional information is provided, have to be researched as credible claims of notability. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:30, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
No. An article that says only "XXX is an entertainer" does not need to be researched. Articles singers, actors, DJs, music producers, etc., are speedily deleted routinely' under A7, with no research, because they do not indicate the importance or significance of the person involved: the fact of being an entertain is not such an indication. Is the meaning of the word "indicate" not clear? —Largo Plazo (talk) 23:32, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
There's no need to be snappy. "XXX is a professional footballer" is a credible claim of importance (WP:ATHLETE), as is "XXX is a professional academic" (WP:ACADEMIC). In either case research is needed to determine whether the notability policy actually applies, but the standard for "credible claim" is not that it is obvious that the notability policy does apply, it's only that it is plausible that the notability policy might apply. This is what I take "indicate" to mean: that the article indicates which notability policy should be researched. If the article does not even make a claim that would let you tell which inclusion policy to check, then I would say there is no credible indication of notability. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:44, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
You're right, I'm sorry about the flip remark. However, once again, you simply declare something to be a logical conclusion when it isn't one. From the fact that there is an article that gives guidance for discerning whether someone in a particular field is notable, it does not follow that being in that field at all is an indication that someone is significant or important.
Try this on for size: "Saying someone is a person is an implicit claim that WP:BIO applies, which is a credible claim that the article meets our inclusion criteria." "Saying that something is website is an implicit claim that WP:WEB applies, which is a credible claim that the article meets our inclusion criteria." —Largo Plazo (talk) 00:04, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The WP:PROF and WP:ATHLETE criteria are much more focused than WP:BIO. Also, while WP:BIO is about coverage by secondary sources, WP:PROF and WP:ATHLETE are not; they are simply about things that a person might have done as a professor or academic. So while I don't think "XXX is a person" is much of a claim, I do think that "XXX is a professional athlete" is a credible claim that the person meets WP:ATHLETE, and the same mutatis mutandis for WP:PROF.
The difference in focus doesn't lead to your conclusion. There is no basis for your conclusion. It remains an unsupported and counterfactual declaration by you. —Largo Plazo (talk) 07:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The point of lowering the standard for A7 (making fewer pages eligible) was to avoid the need for an article to actually explain why a person passes the notability guidelines. It's hard to see how "XXX is a professor" is not a "credible" claim, unless I already the claim is false. There is no requirement that a page has to explain why the person is notable to avoid being an A7 candidate. It seems like you are arguing that a page about a professor would have to actually document that the person passes WP:PROF (that is, document the person's notability) in order to avoid being an A7 candidate. But A7 is supposed to be a weaker standard than notability. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:30, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
    • That's not even factually correct. I can name dozens of full professors from 2nd (or 3rd) string universities who aren't WP:N-notable (let along WP:PROF-notable). Odds are that holders of endowed chairs are notable and full professors from world class institutions are probably notable, but that is still sketchy. I mean, pick any state in the union apart from CA and go to their top shelf public university. Get a list of full professors and see what kind of biographical coverage you find for them. The results will not point toward "most are notable", and that is just in a top shelf school. Protonk (talk) 05:21, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
    • And when I say 2nd or third string I'm still referring to large public universities which grant PhDs in a number of fields. We are far, far, from diploma mills. Protonk (talk) 05:23, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
      • I seriously doubt there are many public schools handing out full professorships to people whose work is not widely cited. --ThaddeusB (talk) 06:02, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
        • I doubt that as well. But "widely cited" doesn't == notable. Even widely cited professors may completely escape biographical coverage for most of their careers. Protonk (talk) 02:24, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
          • Per WP:PROF and AfD norm being widely cited is indeed sufficient for inclusion. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:05, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
            • Then that is a silly and nebulous inclusion criteria which bears no connection to possible biographical sourcing of the subject. But I guess that is a different battle to fight. Either way, I'm skeptical of the need to insert some proviso about academics in A7 because we have an idiosyncratic notability guideline. Protonk (talk) 21:34, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The general rule of thumb for all classes of person in A7 (academic or whatever) should be: when in doubt, don't speedy. There are many newly created articles about non-notable academics and we're better off without them, but there are also many newly created badly-written articles about academics who turn out to be notable, and many universities who won't consider even hiring an assistant professor unless they've done something significant in their research specialty at a level that would pass A7 even though it doesn't pass WP:PROF. It can be difficult to tell the difference unless one is an expert, and we're trying not to make this an encyclopedia that only experts can edit. So the safest solution is to use a prod and allow for time to resolve the question. A7 speedy should be reserved for situations where it's really clearcut, high school students making articles about their high school friends and the like. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:25, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Exception proving the rule: I, for one, plan on A7'ing the next article that says "Mrs. Jones is a professor at Ace Beauty College" where Ace Beauty College is just that and nothing "pops" about Mrs. Jones in a web search beyond where she cuts hair. FWIW, I agree with "when in doubt" but sometimes, there is no doubt. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 05:29, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
  • It seems counter intuitive to lower the CSD bar for a class of articles which has a very specific higher bar set.

Lets also keep in mind that deleting an article != can never have an article. --RadioFan (talk) 12:15, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Let's also keep in mind that deleting an article could very well = ensuring that no-one will bother creating it for seven more years. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 12:18, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


It won't matter. There is such a strong bias against academics on wikipedia that they'll just be deleted in AfD, and that will require and waste the time of editors willing to create and edit articles about notable academics. You might as well just speedy them and save everyone's time. I've raised this issue at the village pump. For what's it worth (essentially nothing, or the value of an article about an academic on wikipedia).[4] --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Your assertion is without merit. Our guidelines purposefully make it easier for academics to get articles than a strict reading of the normal guidelines (GNG) would allow. Very few professors get written about, but many other are allowed to have articles on the basis of their work. This is a good thing that helps counter real-world bias, but to say Wikipedia itself is biased against academics is off the mark. If we just went by the GNG for everything, we would have fewer professor articles. Also, the main reason academics are under-represented in Wikipedia is that no one has written the articles, not that the subjects themselves fail inclusion criteria. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:31, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
The criteria for an academic to be in wikipedia are much more stringent than for a minor footballer. They're deleted all the time. AfD doesn't even follow process with academics, someone says their h-index is low, but doesn't provide proof of what a low h-index is in their field, and the article is deleted. Go to academics for deletion and look at the list some time. Yes, it's a bias against subjects without fan clubs. It reflects the fact that the web still is a venue for popular culture. And, I picked a centralized location for discussion and linked to it, so let's not do the forum shopping comments at me. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 03:26, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
No, you are wrong. In your opinion they are more stringent, and you may be right in an absolute sense. However, that is a real world bias, not a Wikipedia one. Compared to the GNG, PROF is one of the easiest guidelines to pass. Sure a few actors, a few athletes, a few politicians, etc. squeak in under ENT/ATH/POLITICIAN that don't have two independent sources writing about them, but those are the rare exceptions. PROF, however, (rightfully) allows in a lot of people with no independent sourcing written about them. If we eliminated all the SNGs far more professors would be excluded than athlete, because real world sourcing for academics is harder to come by. Maybe the world should focus more on academics than it does, but it isn't Wikipedia's job to change the world. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
P.S. The fact that people are citing h-indexes at all is already evidence that academics are treated more leniently than most subjects. An h-index is an indirect measure of the quality work. Try saying "John Smith is an notable basketball player because he makes 55% of his field goal attempts" and see how well that works. --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:02, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I tend to agree with this. I have avoided creating articles for several living mathematicians who I am certain pass WP:PROF but about whom there is very little published biographical information. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:57, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
And good on you for avoiding it. Why would we have a guideline encouraging us to write articles on subjects with little to no sourcing (and BLPs, of all things)? If professors don't often have much sourcing directly about them, we just shouldn't have many articles on individual professors. We also don't have many articles on middle managers, garbage collectors, or traffic cops, because they also don't generally have a lot of reliable sources about them. That doesn't mean we come up with a different standard that means we allow articles with "John Doe is a traffic cop" with little or no other sourcing directly about him—we just don't write many articles about individuals there. No need for some type of special exemption for professors either. We could always handle the issue through a List of professors at Foo University or in the Foo University article in such a section, with bluelinks for the genuinely notable ones and a brief list entry for the others. Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:08, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The idea being that the article can be about primarily their work (which people have evidently written about) even if no one has written about the professor directly. --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:02, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Then why aren't we writing an article with the work as their subject, rather than a pseudo-biography? I would imagine most professor articles are about a living person, which would militate especially against pseudo-biographies. In that case, the standard is clear—if the sources are primarily about an event or something other than the person him/herself, we write about whatever they did rather than a pseudo-bio that's not really about the person at all. Even for deceased professors, that would make more sense—if the sources primarily wrote about the work rather than the person, we should mirror them and do the same. We have enough trouble with marginally sourced BLPs that aren't really about the person at all, without inviting more. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:09, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
What would you suggest the title of said article be, "The work of John Smith"? We aren't talking about one research paper or book or whatever, but rather the total research done during their career. (Besides any biography is going to primarily be about the things the person did. Purely biographical details will be a minority of any bio on a notable person.)--ThaddeusB (talk) 04:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Not entirely sure we'd call it anything, or need to. If John Smith did notable and highly regarded work in inorganic chemistry, or Roman history, or what have you, we'd simply cite his work in the relevant areas—we don't need an "about the author" article in such cases, just references to the work he's done. If his work as a whole is exceptionally notable, that could be mentioned in the university article, or in the case of larger universities whose divisions may have separate articles of their own, in the appropriate subarticle, with the name redirecting/disambiguating there. If John also attracted enough attention to be notable himself, we can then do a full bio. None of those things are mutually exclusive, and we could do as few or as many as the sources support. While it is true that most people are notable for what they've done, it's also the case that for most notable people, there is biographical detail available, and that the person as well as their work is the subject of sourcing about them. If that's not the case, we should be extremely hesitant at best to try a "biography". Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
essentially, that is amounting to require "famous". notability is much less than famous, or we;d have a very short encyclopedia. And as for including it in the university article, since we normally write at least two or three paragraphs about the work, and most major universities have at least hundreds of present-day notable professors plus all the predecessors whom we will get to eventually, they would be hopelessly long articles. DGG ( talk ) 14:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I think you misunderstood me. I said I don't create them, but this is a personal decision. If an article like that goes to AFD, and the person passes WP:PROF, we will probably keep the article even if there is little biographical information available. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. They are not notable for when they were born, but for the work they did--the same as every other type of person. (with the exception of a few media personalities who are in fact notable for the extensive coverage of their private life). As another example, an athlete is notable as an athlete; if we have information about the athletic accomplishments, that is enough to justify an article. The bio details are just details. Certainly we should try to get them, and we can get the basics very quickly for anyone with a web page, but it requires actual research in a library for earlier people--and depending on nationality and date, it can sometimes be a rather difficult problem requiring archival research--and it is quite difficult for many 19th century athletes as well as professors. DGG ( talk ) 14:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
My general concern about articles for professors is an eventual WP:Pokémon test. I'm surprised it hasn't happened in bulk already, to be honest. Obviously this is not particularly a good thing if it does happen, so we do need a standard to fall back on. It's good to be polite and run AGF, but we absolutely need something related to their professional work as a source... and something not on their University's website. We can run the normal process from there. So, what do we do with new articles of this type that are 100% biographies or mentions of certain works without citation and the only thing we can verify is the bio information which isn't actually relevant to the article? This is assuming that one external source proving their existence is enough to get started (which it should be). Even after this all, I fear our policies are still too loose and we will eventually end up in Pokemon mode since we do seem to end up accepting most sources of notable events they were involved in on a lengthy list of researchers. Maybe just encourage more PRODs on such things and scrutinize claimed works to see if person was the main contributor or no.
No small discussion may be enough and I could picture a list like we slapped on to WP:BAND that we could check. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 02:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed addition

I've noticed many new pages that are inherently and blatantly unencyclopedic, but don't quite fall under any specific CSD. Not sure if this has been brought up before, but I think it would be a good idea to add something along the lines of: "A11: Unambiguously unsuitable content" or some such. –Juliancolton | Talk 01:25, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea, however could be misued. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 01:27, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Isn't that what all the others already do? Define what constitutes unambiguously unsuitable? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:29, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Animal Crossing Friend Codes is a good example. I deleted it as A3, even though I don't think it technically fits it. –Juliancolton | Talk 01:56, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

The issue you're having isn't that the speedy deletion criteria are too narrow, it's that you're misunderstanding the purpose of CSD. CSD was designed to capture the most common reasons for deletion. However, the deletion reasons (despite what some try to claim) are not all-inclusive. There are thousands of other reasons a page is not fit for inclusion that are not and cannot be defined by this page. Just fill in the deletion reason with a manual summary of why the page isn't acceptable and you should be fine. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:10, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Good point. What I meant in my previous remark was not that I was concerned that admins wouldn't get it, but that we would be (more) flooded with bad nominations. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:12, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
The closest thing we have to this is the WP:SNOWBALL test, which they freely admit is a rule with exceptions. I think it's important that deletions not covered by the CSD are made by an admin's individual discretion, and not sanctioned by policy, as this forces them to take on additional risk and responsibility with respect to that decision. I would strongly oppose the proposed criterion for this reason. Dcoetzee 04:57, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
This is called Ignoring the Rules, and where deletion is concerned, it should be done with the greatest of care, since deletions are about the only administrative action that cannot be easily reviewed by the community at large. RayTalk 05:15, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
I think that policy is more here for cases like that. If the page isn't, in a technical sense, covered by a CSD criterion, but the decision to delete is inarguably appropriate, then it's still alright. I do agree, though, that awareness one is stepping outside the normal criteria is important there, to at least put some extra thought into the decision. Doesn't mean you can't, we don't tell people you absolutely must have Form 113-A Subpart I7 signed, and I've got no trouble doing it if it's unambiguously necessary, but be sure what you're deleting is really irredeemable. Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:28, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
  • NO! - such a criteria would essentially be a license to delete anything the administrator felt didn't belong and would make having specific criteria at all pointless. This might not be a major problem for most admins, but it is absolutely certain some of the 1000+ active admins would use it as an excuse to nuke tons of notable subjects on sight because they personally felt the article was too poorly written and/or on too "dumb" a subject to be included. Furthermore, speedy deletions are very rarely reviewed by anyone and even in the rare cases they are questioned and shown to be 100% wrong the admin just says "sorry" and keeps on doing what he has always done. The criteria are very narrow for a reason and should stay that way. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:54, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Hm. It does say unambiguously unsuitable. Quite often, at the moment, this is dealt with by admins IAR speedying such material. This hardly ever gets challenged because the material is ... well, unambiguously unsuitable. We're not talking stuff of doubtful notability or badly written articles here, we're talking "QGKITKSD is a fantastic invention by David Q. Smith of Hicksville, Kentucky. It can turn rubber into platinum.". The problem is that without making CSD ridiculously long, there's no way of framing every single example of content that might as well be nuked on the spot because it's never going to stand past PROD and/or AfD. Black Kite 00:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Just to cite one example, a straight dictionary definition is unambiguously not an encyclopedia article but shouldn't be deleted on sight for good reason. Admins doing the rare IAR deletion is OK, but codifying "delete whatever doesn't belong" is a very bad idea. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:57, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
        • Again, we're not talking about stuff like dicdefs, which are dealt with elsewhere (and are rarely unambiguously unsuitable anyway). Whilst I agree that if you find yourself doing regular IAR speedies you're probably doing it incorrectly, a small number of obvious examples is unexceptionable. As MZM says below, it's common sense. Black Kite 07:22, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

They say that whenever someone is forced to "cite IAR," they're not applying it correctly. It's not a matter of ignoring all rules. It's a matter of applying common sense and upholding both Wikipedia's inclusion criteria and integrity (which are codified in other pages). CSD is one of many "rules" pages on Wikipedia. "Ignoring" it by deleting an obviously unsuitable page is not "ignoring all rules." --MZMcBride (talk) 01:59, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

  • Thaddeus is correct though. What is "unambiguously unsuitable" or not is nothing that can be codified in a way to allow speedy deletion. The problem is that for an admin reviewing article X, the article may well be unambiguously unsuitable in their POV and they believe everyone else thinks the same and thus delete it. Currently the policy tells them to bring such pages to the community for decision, which should be the normal way to delete pages. CSD is not a way to delete all things that need to be deleted but only those pages where AFD/PROD could not possible handle them all. The proposed criterion fails the requirements for a new criterion: It does not happen that often that PROD/AFD cannot handle it, it can't be codified in a strict and unambiguous way and there are criteria already to deal with some of such articles (chatlike comments in A3, hoaxes in G3 etc.). For example, the article Julian mentions above fits A3 imho already, since it contained only chatlike comments and attempts to communicate with others. Regards SoWhy 09:43, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Reject This amounts to AfD because I do not think its an adequate article. We already have some admins sometimes doing that, and the problem is to stop them, not license them. DGG ( talk ) 15:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Question about G8

WP:G8 states: 'such as talk pages with no corresponding subject page; subpages with no parent page; image pages without a corresponding image; redirects to invalid targets, such as nonexistent targets, redirect loops, and bad titles; or categories populated by deleted or retargeted templates. This excludes any page that is useful to the project, and in particular: deletion discussions that are not logged elsewhere, user talk pages, talk page archives...' (my emphasis). As I understand it, this means talk pages of deleted pages can be speedy-deleted, but archives of talk pages cannot - including archives of talk pages where the article has been deleted. Is this correct? My confusion arose when I noticed that the article on Wikipedia Watch had been deleted, as had its talk page, but not Talk:Wikipedia Watch/Archive 1. Is that archive, or is it not, eligible for speedy criterion G8? Robofish (talk) 16:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

It is eligible for deletion (and should be deleted). The criterion is really saying that you shouldn't delete Talk:Wikipedia Watch/Archive 1 because the subjectspace page (Wikipedia Watch/Archive 1) doesn't exist. But you should delete it because the root page (Talk:Wikipedia Watch) has been deleted. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict)It's meant to convey that archives are not speedy deletable simply because (say) Talk:Nosuchpage/Archive 1 doesn't have a corresponding Nosuchpage/Archive 1 in the equivalent namespace. I don't think it was meant to exclude housekeeping deletion of Talk:Nosuchpage/Archive 1 if Nosuchpage were deleted. However, if it's confusing you, and there's evidence that it confused someone else, then it probably needs rewriting for clarity. — Gavia immer (talk) 16:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
In other words, despite its appearance Talk:Wikipedia Watch/Archive 1 isn't a talk page about an archive, it's an archive of a talk page. Mathematically speaking, it's archive(talk(Wikipedia Watch), 1), not talk(archive(Wikipedia Watch, 1)). —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:48, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
If an archive of a talk page is of use to the project, it is not eligible for speedy deletion. If an archive of a talk page is of no use to the project - typically only if the subject of discussion has been deleted - then it may meet G8 requirements. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
So...will anyone be deleting Talk:Wikipedia Watch/Archive 1 then? It's still hanging around, for some reason... GlassCobra 16:42, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Essay - Four eyes are better than two

Any objections to me adding User:Davidwr/Four eyes are better than two to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#See also?

I only ask because this is a policy page, if it were a mere guideline I'd just be bold and do it.

By the way, if you have comments or recommended changes to that essay, or support moving it into Wikipedia space, please comment on its talk page or make the changes directly.

Yes, I am spamming my own work, but this essay was inspired by the A7 discussion above and many more like it since the beginning of the project so I figured its relevant here. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it could use some improvement - in particular, it positions itself as a general principle, but speedy deletion is the only example offered. I'm sure it could be made more compelling. Dcoetzee 09:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
There is a number of CSD related essays and we have never added any of them to the sections (like WP:FIELD or WP:WIHSD). I'd suggest we add an "essay" section with a number of such essays and not just one as "see also" (just like the AC elections features essay-links). And I don't suggest that just because I could spam two of my own essays to such a section . Regards SoWhy 09:35, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. An essay section is a good idea. No comment on the specific essay(s) at this time, as I have not read them yet. --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

David, you say "this essay was inspired by the A7 discussion above", but it will not help with its problem: it already has four eyes: one tags, another deletes. - Altenmann >t 17:12, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually not all speedies are seen by two people. I know I'm not the only admin who sometimes deletes pages that haven't been tagged. I think one should be more even more cautious when doing so than when deleting an article that another editor has tagged for deletion, but if people want to move CSD, or certain categories of CSD, to requiring two sets of eyes for each deletion, then I think that we would need to make sure there was consensus for that. ϢereSpielChequers 17:37, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Consensus is always good. Essay->Guideline->Policy or Essay(s) + discussion -> proposed guideline -> guideline are two common ways to get thoughts into the rules. I for one would love to see "4 eyes is preferred" be a guideline for just about all administrative actions, except of course those where 2 eyes are better for the wiki. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:20, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Sort of discussed here, although the emphasis is on common sense application/deletion rather than two folks. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion: including things made up one day

That is, to include the type of article whose subject exists nowhere else. An example of this is the article Newman Hammerblast; it's likely that the author made it up. There's no way an article like this would pass AfD. This doesn't mean that every article that we can't find a reference for should be deleted, only ones for which we would expect to find a reference. Evil saltine (talk) 16:50, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

This idea is proposed, and rejected, about once a month. The problem is it is simply too hard for one admin to tell what is truly MADEUP on the spot. Anything truly ridiculous can go under the G3, vandalism criteria. PROD is the right place for the rest. --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. Also, the article you cite above is a really bad example for such things. It's possible that this is a drink that is served at some bar the creator went to or that it's some sort of cult drink or anything...but certainly it does exist. It's just very likely not notable but that's not what MADEUP is about. Regards SoWhy 20:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I see your point. Evil saltine (talk) 20:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Abuse filter

Hi, I started a filter to prevent people from removing db tags from their own page here: Special:AbuseFilter/272. You can see the test run here: [5] (From 12/5 onwards). It has no false positives but will not work pages having been edited by more than several people. I would like input on what action the filter should take as well as whether or not it is redundant to SDPatrolBot. Triplestop x3 16:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. Have you had a look through the exceptions listed on SDPatrolBot's userpage, and made sure that they are in the edit filter? - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Strange, I seem to remember requesting a similar filter a bit back and being told that it was not possible...nice filter anyway, you just might want to be careful, at least when setting it to disallow, since it ignores valid PROD removals like this edit if the article was both PRODded and speedy tagged. Regards SoWhy 20:14, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Mmm, as do I, but oh well :D. SoWhy points out the main disadvantage of using the abuse filter; SDPatrolBot keeps the other changes (by only replacing the deletion template), whereas the abuse filter just stops the whole edit. - Kingpin13 (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I am not sure I approve of any edit being prevented, except really outrageous destructive vandalism. What the filter should do is first warn, and then if they go ahead, list. We can look at the list. Actually, i doubt many of them get through as it is, because enough people do patrol speedy. But I would be very glad if we had such a list to confirm it. DGG ( talk ) 23:42, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
The earliest name on article_recent_contributors is not guaranteed to be the original author. If an article is created by A, edited by B, and edited again by A. The earliest name on the list will now be B because a repeated name is always promoted to the top of the list. Hence one can not reliable identify an article's first author with the abuse filter. That's why it was rejected at filter requests. Dragons flight (talk) 00:33, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Ah, well in that case never mind then. The filter will be there in case any solutions come in the future. Triplestop x3 00:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
This could be useful in warning mode: Just have the filter put up a big red warning if you are in the history list at all saying
"Attention: If you created this article, you should not remove the deletion tag, add
{{hangon|Put a reason why speedy deletion criteria does not apply here, or put a request to hold off deleting for a day for you to improve the article here.}}
If you were not the original author please disregard this notice."
davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion: A10

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.
The consensus, interpreted by an administrator (not me) back in November, was to add A10 to the criteria for speedy deletion. This discussion has now been open for one full month, and it's been ten days since DGG re-opened it. Reviewing the discussion from the last ten days, I think it is obvious that there is no consensus whatsoever to repeal A10 at this time; I therefore close this discussion as a formality to acknowledge the adoption of A10. If DGG or any other editor in good standing wishes to start a RfC seeking the repeal of A10, they of course are entitled to do so. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 17:56, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Closing discussion as a formality; the consensus, interpreted by an administrator, was the addition of A10 to the criteria for speedy deletion. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 17:11, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I have reopened the discussion. 2 weeks is not enough for something so radical. I do not think the discussion had sufficient notice . See my comment below. I do not think the implications were sufficiently considered. Frankly, I did not continue in the discussion after my few comments, because I could not believe that something like this would have been seriously considered. If the admin who closed it disagrees with allowing more time, I will not consider it edit warring if he reverts me, but will proceed by way of an RfC. I apologize for moving so quickly, but I wanted to prevent archiving. DGG ( talk ) 13:56, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure most of us have seen articles with titles like "What is Hannah Montana?" or "Why is the capital of Russia?"; pages written by a new user who isn't familiar with our format, but wants to contribute anyway. These articles don't neatly fit into any criteria, given that they are on a worthy subject, but they need to be deleted as we already have a page on the topic. Redirects are possible, but a lot of these titles would be deletable redirects if changed. A normal CSD criteria would be bitey to a user who is clearly attempting to help, however misguided. That's why I suggest we add an additional A10 criteria;

A10. Duplicate of worthy subject
An article about a worthy subject that already has an existing, established article of greater quality, and where the title would create an implausible redirect

This criteria, at the very least, would enable us to implement a kinder template, with information on how to contribute, rather than just the cold hearted A7 or G2. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 23:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Support, the examples given do not fit under any other criteria, and it occurs enough to warrant the inclusion of a new criterion. –blurpeace (talk) 23:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Support Good category for covering such articles.-- fetchcomms☛ 23:40, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Support I've run into these such articles, absolutely a need for a criteria to cover this  IShadowed  ✰  23:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) What about applicability outside of these cases? I'm thinking especially in terms of stubs where it's not necessarily clear which is the "established article of greater quality." I don't know how often that occurs, but I could forsee this being misapplied in some cases as worded. Maybe adding "recently created article" to the fore could prevent some of that? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 23:55, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
That is what I was intending to suggest, so I think that's a good idea. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 00:07, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Upon thinking about it, is the "of greater quality" part actually even necessary? Even if the old article isn't substantially "better," if it's "established" then it shouldn't be viable to be replaced without bold actions or discussion on the talkpage. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 04:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Support - fine idea. Straightforward, not redundant, and beneficial because it provides a better description for these cases. If a new page is basically copied from another article (which serves no useful purpose), it would tend to fall under G6; FWIW, I've already been making a few of these "A10"-type deletions with my own personalized summary. Still, this would be very good to implement. JamieS93 01:20, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Support Good idea, I think Amory's suggestion is good too. What about changing the language from "worthy subject" to "eligible subject"? Beeblebrox (talk) 01:51, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Support I've been waiting for something like this to pop up... Until It Sleeps Happy Thanksgiving 02:14, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Support, I'd propose phrasing it something like: "An article on a topic already covered by an existing article, where the article's title would not make a useful redirect to the article already written." Excellent idea though, and this does come up frequently enough to warrant the addition. Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:13, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Support I really like this, and I agree with Seraphimblade's proposed phrasing. ~ Riana ⁂ 05:41, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

How's this wording?

"A recently created article on a topic already covered by an existing article, where the article's title would not make a useful redirect to the article already written."

This takes into account Amory's and Seraphimblade's proposed changes. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 05:59, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

  • Support, this comes up very often, and it would nice to have a CSD for them. I prefer the second wording, as the title is the problem, not the quality. - Kingpin13 (talk) 08:45, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support I don't recall encountering these in the wild, but since other people apparently have and this criteria is otherwise reasonable... --Cybercobra (talk) 08:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Neutral I cannot say from my experience that this is really coming up this often and I think PROD could handle them just fine but I won't oppose the idea. Regards SoWhy 09:09, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support I see these already either as G6es or redirect-then-R3s, but I agree that it's worth codifying as a separate criterion - these are quite common, and the wording of it is good and less bitey. ~ mazca talk 10:05, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • support in principle I'd like to see the wording of the resulting templates. I think it is important that the phrase "of greater quality" is part of the criteria that new page patrollers use to decide whether to tag as A10; But is not included in the templates pasted in the article, and especially not on the users talkpage ϢereSpielChequers 10:15, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support with followup. User 100% needs to get a message, with no exceptions, that could easily give a friendly explanation of it and how they can still help the Encyclopedia even if we did speedily delete their article. This would probably need a few new talk template, but still easy. There are a lot of constructive words to use that wouldn't be scary and would terrify anyone who made a new article and saw a high red box instead. Would this be usable for, say, band members or albums names of things pending discussion as non-notable music articles? ♪ daTheisen(talk) 11:03, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
    Possible template created in my user subspace here, feel free to improve/comment as you see fit. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 11:09, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Awesome! I'll start the talk page over there, too. Goal being to be as encouraging as possible. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 11:41, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

A more contemporary example; How the earth came to be. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 12:13, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

  • Comment. Can someone ease my concerns that this criterion will not be (ab)used to speedy articles whose deletion is not uncontroversial? I'm specifically thinking of articles like Plot of Les Misérables, which spawned a large AfD and a subsequent DRV, in relation to the proposed wording "... topic already covered". decltype (talk) 12:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
I agree. Odds of something like that getting through even a hangon tag and some quick improvements would be unlikely to slip past the larger number of patrols of hangons and admins peeking in. Any actual new information offered would be easily added to the existing article. ♪ daTheisen(talk)
that's not the case. People will create a new spinoff article about the plot, and it will be removed under this criterion instead of being discussed.-- or even if it has been discussed it could still be removed. DGG ( talk ) 02:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Either way, I think I'd be more comfortable with something like "a recently created article whose subject is already covered in the same or greater detail in a different article, and [is not a plausible redirect]", or maybe something like "a recently created article that provides no information not already present in an existing article on the subject, and [is not a plausible redirect]". I'm not opposed to the principle, but am unsure about the wording. decltype (talk) 16:00, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • In case if got glazed over above, Backslash Forwardslash's proposal page on a template actually has 3 general ideas up already and the more input the better in edits or the talk page. If we can make this look solid in some haste the more seriously it'll be taken overall. Consensus doesn't seem like a problem for now, at least... a general agreement I don't think should be all that difficult. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 13:25, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • On first sight strong oppose, as it may prevent a calm evaluation of mergeable content, corrections of possible mis-namers and removes without a pressing reason a content addition from all edit histories. Redirecting is the appropriate action for content on an existing topic where no other speedy deletion reason applies. A useless redirect is not necessarily a harmful one. Tagging it for R3 is in my opinion outright incorrect as there was no redirect 'created' in the first place and the fact that I see this happen, only nurtures my doubt about extending this idea to an automatism on our already often too frantic new page patrol. In short, I am wary of codifying the basic assumption that these duplicates "need to be deleted" as it is unfounded in principle and often wrong in practice. Let's redirect and see later if the redirect actually bothers enough to have it deleted at RfD.-Tikiwont (talk) 14:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
On second thought my objection goes against the application to legit articles: They are never candidates for speedy deletion just because they seem to be misnamed duplicates. That is different than the examples that people seem to have in mind. Those are articles with content of the type outlined at WP:NOT#Content, e.g soapboxing and the like: completely unencyclopedic stuff. Which is again not a criterion for speedy deletion by itself. I am still not convinced that combining those two aspects and adding "that fail WP:NOT" makes it already a good criterion, but as far as I am concerned, that is the only direction to consider as tricky comparisons of names and content are beyond the scope of CSD. Better messages are good in any case and would be useful also for redirects but sometimes a self written text specific to the case is best. --Tikiwont (talk) 20:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Opppose I think A) it isn't clear that the numbers of these is so large that PRODing won't work B) I worry that the criteria is too subjective and will result in articles being deleted in good faith that are actually viable. C) I worry that it might be abused as a general "we don't need this article" thing. There are too many things already being speedied out of process. As nearly any article can fit this definition (Astrophysics is already covered by Physics right?). I think this is solving a minor problem and potentially creating a major one. Hobit (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • It does happen often - I certainly see it happen more often than A9 articles. Again, the Astrophysics article an any existing article don't get covered by this, as it is not a 'recently created article'. I believe your, and Tikiwont's suggestions, are solvable with tightening the wording; can you think of anything obvious that could be changed to ease your concerns? How about Decltype's suggested wording? \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 22:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm not a newpage patroller, but I'm doubtful that this happens often enough that prodding is that horrible. Decltype's suggestion is certainly an improvement and addresses many of my worries. Your point about existing articles is understood, but my point is that someone can easily make such a mistake in an area outside of their interest. This implies that speedy is the wrong way to do this. Hobit (talk) 17:46, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support. I think this mostly happens in practice. The blatantly non-salvageable examples shouldn't be sent to AfD or PROD'd just because it's not explicitly written down in the CSD. PeterSymonds (talk) 22:20, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose --very strong oppose if it is just an existing article, not an existing article of better quality. First of all, it is not necessarily obvious when there is no content worth merging; this is usually worth a look by the community. The CSD conditions need to be essentially indisputable. The examples given are, but most will not be quite so clear. Second, If someone does contribute an article of better quality under a different name, is it seriously being suggested that we should throw it out? I do not see how that helps Wikipedia in the slightest. I would hope no admin would be careless enough to do this, instead of merging, but I know from experience that this is a vain hope. The minimum conceivably acceptable wording would be Decitype's a recently created article that provides no information not already present in an existing article on the subject, and is not a plausible redirect. Even here, I see misuse: a person will start a spinoff article by making a copy of a section, intending to expand it. It seems to me that prod would be a much better way to go, to give adequate time to do the writing.
Anyway, we already have a very simple alternative in cases where the redirect is really off the wall: first redirect, and then delete the redirect as R3. DGG ( talk ) 02:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
But that method R3 is expressly forbidden. To solve that misuse, simply make an exception for content forks; the deletion of those would be against the spirit of the proposal anyway. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 03:52, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
That was a very recent addition to the policy that AFAIK has not been discussed. I have therefore reverted it. decltype (talk) 14:38, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Recently added phrase, yes, but not as addition of policy but as clarification of something that is incorrect anyways as those have not been 'created' as redirects. SIn fact if it was correct that newbie writes article, editor converts to redirect, they or another editor tag for R3 and an admin deletes, we would indeed not have this thread on A10 as it basically amounts to codifying that sequence of events under yet to be determined circumstances. Anyways, I've opened a separate thread on R3 below.--Tikiwont (talk) 15:05, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
  • comment if this comes to be, then the purported duplicate must be named in the tag. This is so that a deleting admin can confirm the case. But I would like to also say that if the scope of the new article differs then it should not be deleted speedily. For example topic X may be forked to History of X, List of Xs, X in popular culture, Blue X etc with nothing but the original X article paragraph as a starting position, but which could then be expanded on if the new article stayed around, and for which the detail would be too great for the original article X. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:27, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support - This is a very useful idea. I've run across articles like this before, and the only thing you can tag/delete them with is G6. --Coffee // have a cup // ark // 02:48, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

In trying to take the objections and viewpoints into account, would the wording of the following allay the concerns?

A10. Recently created articles on an existing topic
A recently created article with no connection to another article (i.e. relevant page history), that provides no information not already present in an existing article of greater quality on the subject, and the title is not a plausible redirect. This does not include content forks or split pages. Pages of greater quality that the existing article should be merged

Best, \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 04:04, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd keep it to the point and strike the last sentence.--Cybercobra (talk) 12:31, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
It's an improvement, but I'm not so sure about "quality", as it is a very subjective measure. decltype (talk) 14:38, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I still think that quality evaluation is beyond CSD and that this should be restricted to unencyclopedic stuff per WP:NOT. Maybe reads also better:
A recently created, unencyclopedic article with no relevant page history, that provides no information not already present in an existing article on the subject, where the title is not a plausible redirect. This does not include content forks, split pages or any article that aims at expanding or detailing an existing one.
Which would not mean that I am already swayed.--Tikiwont (talk) 15:20, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Support - This is a wonderful idea. As a seasoned (former) NPPer, I can't tell you how far this would go towards resolving the issues around this specific kind of new article (which is fairly common). <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 19:21, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
ABSOLUTELY NOT Anything that involves a thorough review of the content to see if something could not be merged should be sent to AfD. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 17:11, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
But it could be taken to be, far too easily. What constitutes the same subject? What constitutes better or greater quality? These are all in the eye of the beholder, and reasonable editors can surely differ, and differ greatly, on such broad concepts as content forks and article quality. CSD criteria should be clearcut, and err on the side of caution and preservation of information in the face of any ambiguity. I can see this being applied controversially all too easily. I've been in too many AFDs where this sort of thing was controversial, I just can't see us benefiting from applying it as a speedy. RayTalk 01:39, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support the principle but not yet the wording. I'm not a new page patroller and so I'm going to just take the word of the folks who are regarding the frequency. I think the key points for the criterion are (in no particular order:
    1. Recently created
    2. The topic duplicates the topic of an existing article
    3. not a content fork
    4. not a split or breaking out of an existing article
    5. The content obviously and significantly is inferior to or duplicates all or part of an existing article, although not necessarily verbatim
    6. Redirecting the title to the existing article would not produce a useful redirect.
Regarding point 4, I've seen this done by first copying the information from the existing article into a new one and doing basic cleanup on it, before then removing the copied comment from the main article. We need to be careful with this not to catch a break out in progress. I've looked at the templates linked above in Backslash Forwardslash's userspace and think they're both missing a key point - we should (imo) be explicitly inviting the creator of the new article to contribute to the existing one, with a prominent positive message pointing them there and to it's talk page. I'll have a go at writing one when I'm more awake (it's gone 2am here atm). Thryduulf (talk) 02:11, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
OK, my proposed wording of the template for the user talk page is now at User:Backslash Forwardslash/A10 Template. Thryduulf (talk) 18:07, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support This is a good idea; we need to close this loophole in the CSD criteria. So long as the wording is strict enough to prevent controversial speedy deletions, I don't see a problem. I think a lot of these would-be-A10 pages are currently deleted under G2 as test pages, which is stretching that criterion a bit too far for my liking. However, it seems like a waste of time to go through PROD and/or AfD with some of those articles, especially those where speedy deletion would not be controversial. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 06:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Ugh -- I realize this has already been implemented, but it looks like something ripe for abuse and generally assuming bad faith. When people don't know where to put their article, those articles should be merged, or a redirect created, or judgment used in deleting ridiculous titles along with a gentle note to the creator about how to improve the section of the existing article that they are interested in. None of this is compatible with speedy deletion, which is over-reaching its remit. Oppose. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 15:40, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support for A10. Recently created articles on an existing topic. The other wording is confusing and may make them try again. If the article they create isn't notable it can be deleted under other criteria. Mkdwtalk 20:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
see my dicussion below, under opposition. If people disapprove of this way of proceeding, revert me, fix the heading number so the follow sections are not subheadings of an archived section, and I will open an RfC. DGG ( talk ) 13:56, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Support Although further clarification of the key terms would be needed, but this would make a suitable speedy for maintenance purposes . It would take some clue to carry out effectively, but none more than the A7 and G11 criteria. Like A7 and G11 the reviewing admin would be within his right to make changes to a qualifying article instead of deleting it. ThemFromSpace 09:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Where do we stand?

Currently the criterion is in since Backslash Forwardslash as proposer has also declared it to be consensus.[6] I'm not convinced that this has been discussed already widely enough or that inclusion has really been noticed. While there is a lot of support there is also some substantial opposition. I have not reverted because I would still not rule out that some foolproof clause can be found, although that might reduce it to cases where a prod or a redirect works fine. In any case the current wording "that aims to provide no information not already present within the scope of an existing article on the subject" sounds somewhat awkward.--Tikiwont (talk) 13:30, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

After going through that discussion multiple times, my read was that there was consensus for the inclusion, and that the opposition was mostly due to the wording (which I again inserted the version that would be most indicative of the consenus). The discussion had gone on for two weeks and was advertised in the Signpost, so I don't think that there wasn't enough attention given to the discussion. However, after a possible "lightbulb appearing above" moment, perhaps the clause that we were all searching for was; "that does not aim to expand upon, detail or improve information within scope of an existing article on the subject". Apologies if my addition seemed a bit hasty, I had added it to the page and waited for a time before making MediaWiki changes, and was simply trying to keep the idea going (it does have substantial support). \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 13:43, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
FWIW, as somebody who did question the wording and was worried about it, I think that's a fair interpretation. Of course, a CSD criterion doesn't really exist until it shows up in Huggle and Twinkle ;-) RayTalk 13:51, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, i did not find it outrageous in substance or form, but a formal and visible closure of a thread on a deletion criterion by an uninvolved administrator might be appropriate as this is after all what we expect for any deletion discussion that affects a single item. Which can of course still be done. I was also not aware where this has been crossposted. How about the village pump?--Tikiwont (talk) 14:09, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
It was put in the Signposts' Discussion report which I feel gives it enough 'exposure'. And as for the uninvolved administrator, User:Decltype has copyedited the entry while being somewhat neutrally involved in the discussion, and while I don't want to put words in his mouth, I feel his actions at least display that the addition was not erroneous. I would like your feedback on the last clause I suggested, because I believe that may very well check the last box that is causing some discomfort. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 14:31, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Well I wasn't strictly uninvolved since I participated in the discussion. However, having re-read the thread, I too reached the conclusion that there was a consensus to add the criterion, and I expect the wording to improve if it turns out that the current one has problems in practice. The policy page is not set in stone after all, it is constantly evolving, and there are many recent examples of tweaks and adjustments being made when there is consensus that the current wording does not quite reflect the intent of a criterion. decltype (talk) 14:56, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Guess I kind of prompted this. Still I think this kind of situation where people may feel defensive or petulant is best avoided in the very beginning.--Tikiwont (talk) 18:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Two weeks is not all that long for something like a CSD criteria. I'd give it another couple of weeks, at least. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 15:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Or to put it differently, even if there was agreement among people here which are mostly those interested in speedy deletions, the sign post might have been a good choice to announce that among the many threads on this board that rush by, this time a proposal with a chance of gaining wider community support has resulted. I'm somewhat unhappy with my own actions here but after I lodged the first oppose in the original thread and also opened this sub-thread, I did neither want to revert nor provoke the kind of implicit local 'closure' above. I'll comment below on the substance. --Tikiwont (talk) 14:30, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm uneasy with the "aim to" wording. It excludes the obviously ridiculous like Better article about Barack Obama, and all of the other criteria, even G11, consider pages as they currently are instead of trying to mindread the creator's intentions. —Korath (Talk) 22:44, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Seconded. I wouldn't know how to evaluate a candidate under this criterion with "aim to", and ultimately I'd have to ignore that language in making a decision. I also think the word "detail" as it's being used is not very helpful, what do we mean by it—clarify existing material? What is meant by "detail" that is not covered by "expand upon" and "improve information"? I also think we should mention in the ending caveats that article do not qualify if they have sourced, mergeable material. e.g. someting along the lines of: This does not include content forks, split pages, article that aims at expanding or detailing an existing one or articles with sourced, mergeable material. The use of "detailing" in this trailing sentence is also not clear.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:10, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. The main part should focus on the article, "aim to" can stay in the qualifier.--Tikiwont (talk) 15:22, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Twinkle now lists A10 with the current version of the criterion, once you think you've finalized the wording please let us know at WT:TW (and the people at WT:HUGGLE as well). Thanks, Amalthea 14:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Examples?

Are anyone aware of any page tagged or deleted under this new criterion? I would be interested to see how it is applied in practice. decltype (talk) 08:50, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Internet emerges, Эрнест Вуд, I ♥ Elephants, Global warming caused by, Ghandi's assination, Lista de episódios de Lie to Me. It was only recently added to Twinkle too, so it should be seeing more use. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 09:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
\ /, I tagged Internet emerges with A10 and was impressed with your template, Template:Db-a10-notice, which I think is an excellent response that encourages further participation in the project by new editors. The creator of Internet emerges was not discouraged and has since created four new stubs, none of which have been speedied. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 17:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I've deleted Inset number, after prodding uncovered a duplicate, so that would be an example where it can be used after content has been analysed.--Tikiwont (talk) 15:22, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Just to clarify, this was more of a test case in view of ongoing discussions. --Tikiwont (talk) 14:17, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

wording fix

the actual wording permits the deletion of any article on a new topic, since the heading and the rule are usually considered separate. We normally include the heading in the paragraph describing the criterion to avoid confusion. I have done so without changing the meaning, even though I in addition object to the entire concept & I consider the wording problem and the many other wording problems discussed above as examples of the way this has been done without adequate consideration. But I consider the fix totally non-controversial,or I wouldn't be making it DGG ( talk ) 13:56, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

opposition

I am very uncomfortable with this criterion, which I did notice, but thought so unlikely as not to be worth detailed consideration, so I didn;t keep track of it. My fault, but if I had seen I certainly would have opposed it much more strongly/ I challenge the depth of the discussion by which it was adopted & the small number of particpants for a major change. . It is about the most newby-hostile criterion it is possible to imagine: A recently created article with no relevant page history that does not aim to expand upon, detail or improve information within any existing article(s) on the subject, and where the title is not a plausible redirect. This does not include content forks, split pages or any article that aims at expanding or reorganizing an existing one or that contains referenced, mergeable material

first, that "recently created" If the article is impossible, recent creation should not make any dfifference.
Most articles that evoke this criterion will have been contributed in good faith. The appropriate response to a newby who does this is advice. In cases like this, I normally suggest to the author that they do a db-self, and find some existing articles to add to, & in my experience, they always do that and are grateful. If it had been accompanied by the noticve of immediate deletion, most editors will not return to us. This is a sure way to prevent the growth or even the survival of Wikipedia. The particular type of article
second, "aim to improve on" this is a criterion that is almost impossible to interpret. We do not know what people's aims are. Except for vandals and people playing games, every contributor of an article intends to improve on the encyclopedia.
I think this will be used for a variety of unsatisfactory articles with out any clear boundaries, and for which we have a fully satisfactory way of dealing with by prod.
In fact, I do disagree with almost every example given above. "Inset number" is an attempt to provide an example. It is not a very good one, but it was an attempt to improve the encyclopedia. These need specialist attention, and AfD (or sometimes prod) is the place to see they get it. "Internet emerges" is an almost empty article, and could either have been handled as such, or simply prodded. It was not harmful. "Эрнест Вуд" was already at AFD, where it would have been rather quickly deleted--I comment more on this foreign language dupliucatetitle problem a little further on. "Global Warming caused by" is not a good article, but the user probably intended to introduce a summary article on this topic., and needed advice. That does not to me count as a duplicate. Prod is the way. "ghandi's assasination" was one somewhat incoherent sentence and had no substantial content. It would have fit very well as A3. and I would have delete (to be continued) "Lista de episódios de Lie to Me" is a special case--an exact copy of an article with a different title that is not a good redirect because it is in a foreign language. We could better craft a special rule that applies to only this (or where it is a partial copy) --but some such apparent articles have in fact had additional information, and also I have rather frequently seen people start new articles on exactly similar subjects by using existing ones as a kind of template and making the necessary changes. They do need to be linked, because otherwise it destroys the edit history, but otherwise it is an acceptable way for creating some articles. Shall I put the text of these articles on a subpage here? I'd rather not formally undelete them. DGG ( talk ) 15:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 13:56, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

This criterion is designed so that we don't bite newbies. Currently, all they get after creating such articles is a standard CSD notice, or even worse, a notice about 'their redirect' being deleted. {{db-a10-notice}} is different from the other notices in that is not only encourages and assures the creator, it helps them find the correct way to contribute! The whole idea is to ensure that good faith contributions are not forced through another criterion and forgotten. The articles we deleting aren't going to be great, they aren't going to be well written, but the whole idea is to provide more assistance than we could possibly provide through an A3 notification tag. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 22:09, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

the way to deal with snarky templates is to improve the templates. But you seem to have missed the point that the articles being tagged would most of them not meet A3 or any other speedy criterion. The relevant template that needs to be dealt with is WP:PROD, which is already fairly helpful, though much too wordy. Personally though, I do not think that any template can do much good. What does good to new editors writing inadequate articles is personal advice, discussing the actual article that they have written and what it would need. I admit i do not have time to do this as often as possible, but I try at least for the ones that look like help would be appreciated. The usual comment by them after I;ve done this, is to thank me for actually saying something helpful,and a good deal of the time, a db-self. That's the right sort of speedy for these articles. DGG ( talk ) 00:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Support new A10 criterion. Logical. Debresser (talk) 22:21, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
  • I applaud the spirit this was proposed under, but I have major reservations. There may be a few clear cut cases, but I fear this will become a magnet for bad tags and bad deletions. Yes, Who is Hannah Montana is an obvious one. But for every one like that, I fear there will be dozens tagged on topics that require specialized knowledge to know if it really is a duplicate, is not a valid redirect, and doesn't merit its own article. --Fabrictramp | talk to me 23:20, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, the whole concept of meriting its own article is one that is not appropriate ever for speedy unless it can be defined more exactly. We've over the time gone to great trouble to get reasonably successful wordings for some of the criteria. But now this proposal would undo all that in many cases. I will try to define a more narrow wording that will deal with the true duplicates. (there is hidden way of dealing with duplicates that sometimes has been used: change the article to a redirect, and then go to RfD as it being unlikely. RfD can be very quick when its clear enough. This procedure obvious must be used with discretion, but it does allow a few days of dfscussion, not a few minutes. DGG ( talk ) 00:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
We are not discussing whether an article deserves it's own article; rather whether we already have one. That's why A10 doesn't cover splits or mergers! Advising the user how to write better articles isn't changing the fact there already is an existing one which their time is better of being contributed to. We aren't helping anyone by using facetious deletion summaries or simply stretching the boundaries; and the solution of RfD is by far the worst - how would a newbie even know what a redirect is let alone why 'their' redirect is being deleted. We shouldn't treat a new editor like that. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 01:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

DGG, I strongly disagree on this. I think the templates here are actually very friendly to good-faith new users, and I think A10 is a good addition to the CSD. You talked about Internet emerges above, but what about Grasslands, Estuary, Forest, which I also tagged as A10? As you can see (but I can't, since I'm not an administrator), the article essentially discussed the subject of grassland without expanding or improving on the subject already covered in that article. Now, the article was deleted by Altenmann without actually citing any of the speedy criteria, but I personally felt that A10 was the only one that covered it. This really is a useful criterion. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 05:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Other recent examples of my taggings where A10 fit perfectly well: The Sopranos, Season 1 and Celebrity Deathmatch Cast. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 21:47, 9 December 2009 (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.

Proposal (related to A9)

I have a feeling this has probably been proposed before, but I think it would be useful to create a criteria similar to A9 for books/novels, having come across a few in new page patrolling that would have met the A9 criteria if they were a musical recording. It could be a separate criteria parallel to A9, or could be made a part of A9. Potential wording for the new criteria based on A9:

A?. No indication of importance (books/novels).
An article about a book or novel that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant and where the author's article does not exist. This is distinct from questions of verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion does not apply to other forms of creative media, products, or any other types of articles.

Let the discussion begin. Ks0stm (T•C•G) 19:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose to the first bold part. Any text about a book may be safely and easily merged into the author's article. If its content is an unreferenced plot summary, it may/must be severely trimmed as original research. - Altenmann >t 19:40, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Now that I take a closer look at that, it seems that A9's non-specific theme is "article about _______ that does not indicate importance and when the creator's article does not exist." Is this a theme that more criteria could be based off of? Ks0stm (T•C•G) 20:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Someone who manages to publish a book, usually has a publisher or at least a distributor, i.e. was assigned an ISBN etc. As such, books are different from musical recordings that anyone can successfully publish using the web. Furthermore, book articles that need to be deleted (and cannot be redirected/merged/etc.) are only created very seldom compared to most other CSDable articles and as such they can easily be taken care of using PROD/AFD. So even if we assumed that books are similar to musical recordings (which I don't), such a proposed addition fails the "frequent" requirement on top of this page. Regards SoWhy 23:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Aye, books are a rarity here. Software, however ... Black Kite 23:44, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Disagree with SoWhy—it has never been easier than today to get self-published (or purpose-published) books with ISBNs created (although it always has been reasonably easy for people of means). Indeed this is a notable topic already covered (see self-publishing and this Google News archive search). Bongomatic 23:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Possibly but it's still more complicated than burning a CD or having a MySpace page with music. Regards SoWhy 16:32, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
  • I haven't run across that many articles about unimportant books that should be deleted. I don't see the need. Music singles and software are another story. Especially music singles, but that's a gripe for another page. RayTalk 01:38, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
  • The difference is that a notable CD by a non-notable band is extremely rare, but a notable book by a non-notable author is not all that uncommon. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:45, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Can you provide an example? I can't seem to find any. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 01:50, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
  • (Per my proposal above) I agree with Ks0stm. Why should we have any article on wikipedia where the creator of the subject of the article doesn't already have a page. I can't seem to find one article where a product or form of media is considered notable when the company that made it/author isn't. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 01:49, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Very strong oppose for books. In practice, naïve new editors are often writing inadequate articles about books they've read in school, but which are very notable--sometimes major national prizewinners, sometimes such famous books as Brown Girl, Brownstones, which I long ago rescued from prod. It is not that easy to tell unless someone recognizes the book. A9 works in part because our coverage here is fairly exhaustive, and contemporary popular music at any rate is covered quite thoroughly. It is simply not the same on children's literature. People know only the books of their own generation (and possibly their younger siblings or their children). There are hundreds at least of notable chjildren's and young people's authors that ought to have article and do not. We also do have a principle that if an author is known for only one book, the article should sometimes be at the book, not the author--I do not think it is necessarily right, but we have often decided that in AfD. This rulewould simply be incompatible. DGG ( talk ) 05:42, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
as for software, the problem is there will not be articles on their authors in almost all cases, so we cannot use this sort of criterion. Black Kite, if you can find one that is not going to be controversial, we might consider it--but considering the rancor at some recent AfDs for them, it's not going to be easy. DGG ( talk ) 05:45, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Unclear wording of P1

Speedy deletion criterion P1 has been worded more or less the same way since its inception, so far as I know:

Any topic that would be subject to speedy deletion as an article.

However, I think that wording is unclear and possibly too narrow, particularly given the text of the {{db-p1}} template:

This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. It is a portal page which would qualify for speedy deletion under [[Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#{{{1}}}|CSD {{{1}}}]] if it were an article. See CSD P1.

It currently seems that P1 only applies to portals about topics that do not merit an article (i.e. under A5, A7, A9), much less a portal. However, the template seems to state that all of the criteria for articles may be applied to portals through P1. This discrepancy is confusing to say the least; I personally favor rewording P1 so it allows speedy deletion of any portal that would be subject to speedy deletion as an article – not just portals on topics that would be subject to speedy deletion as articles.

Here's an example of the problem. Portal:The Addams Family contained no substantial content and contained insufficient context. If it was an article, it could've been tagged with A1 or A3. But because it was in the portal namespace, it was restricted to the general and portal criteria. P2 did not apply because there were many articles about The Addams Family on Wikipedia. P1, it seemed, was not applicable because the portal's topic was ineligible for speedy deletion in the article namespace, even though its content was. That issue was taken care of with a WP:IAR speedy deletion, but it would be best to clarify the P1 issue here and now. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 03:00, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I fail to see the problem. The example you used could have been speedy deleted as G2 without problems. The creator admitted even that it was only created in some sort of test... Regards SoWhy 14:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Okay, maybe there wasn't a problem with that example necessarily. But I still think some changes should be made so the wordings of the criterion and its template don't differ. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 20:17, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I've boldly changed the wording. Does anyone object? A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 17:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Usually we change the templates to fit the criteria, not the criteria to fit the templates, don't we? Regards SoWhy 18:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
That's true; however, this would be my preferred version. Would you rather change the template? Moreover, do you have any objections to this wording of P1? A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 19:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
For the record, I am fine w/the reword. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Use of F8 in wildly different cases

User:Zscout370 recently deleted a .gif when a different, but related, .svg, was available on Commons, and in the midst of a complicated copyright discussion. His log entry referred to F8. When I asked, he said that F8 doesn't mean exactly the same format. I don't see how a .gif is even remotely similar to an .svg. He said that IAR somehow means he can and will do as he pleases, and says he does this under F8 all the time. Either the F8 needs to be changed, or he needs to be informed that policy applies to him too. Speedy deletion is used far too often by admins who think it is a way for them to delete what they please with a consensus of only one. For articles it works reasonably well, but for images, it is constant for admins to entirely disregard policy. Tb (talk) 16:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Let's see: F8 requires that "The Commons version is in the same file format and is of the same or higher quality/resolution" (emphasis added) The policy says it's not a F8 and the admin in question admits as much. Unfortunately, some admins indeed think that IAR means "I can do what I want" but that cannot be changed by discussion here. If the admin in question does not want to restore the image, you can use WP:DRV. If it really is relevant to a discussion, it should probably not have been deleted no matter what anyway.
On a side note, I agree that F8 could be changed to allow similar deletions, for example if someone converts a free .gif to .svg and uploads it to Commons directly. Regards SoWhy 18:42, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

A7 and things

Can someone explain why we don't specifically include things or objects under A7. It would appear that at this time I can nominate a rock, and it would not qualify under A7. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:26, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

All rocks are inherently notable, see WP:ROCKS. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:37, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Oh wait, I made that up. From what it looks like, this is a result of some things, such as books and software, being specifically excluded. You make a good point though, I'm just not sure what the solution is. I would like to think that in practice a rock that got nominated would be deleted anyway per WP:IAR, but sadly practical application of IAR seems to be going out of style. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:42, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Because CSD is not designed to cover every topic imaginable, but rather limit the AfD/PROD load by dealing w/the most frequent offenders. Just use PROD for these sorts of things. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:43, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Aw cmon, what about creating {{db-stone}}? Beeblebrox (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Did you ever come across a stone for speedy deletion when browsing CAT:SD? ;-) Regards SoWhy 20:47, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
  • This came up when I found an asteroid that was an article. The just of the text was that it was named after someone. Clearly I don't find that as notable and it should not need to go to prod. Yes, asteroids are rocks, or at least rock like. I guess my concern is that the wording of A7 has become overly restrictive to the point that we have removed the inclusion of items that common sense would say should be included. Likewise, I could write the article on The Temple of Goddess Spirituality Dedicated to Sekhmet, yes it does exist, and it could not be strictly speedy deleted as a thing. I guess my point may be that we need to allow more flexibility back in. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Surely a better action than deleting such an article on an asteroid would be redirecting it to the relevant List of minor planets sub list. Davewild (talk) 22:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC) Also I noted that in the particular case you refer to the prod has been contested anyway showing it is not the uncontroversial case that speedy deletion should be for. Davewild (talk) 22:15, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Also, being dedicated to someone is an indication of importance/significance imho. Vegas, I think you misunderstand the purpose of A7: It's not to delete anything that does not need discussion, it's to delete those things where XFD could not cope with when send to instead (i.e. because MySpace kids and bands create pages for themselves all the time). Rocks are not a subject where articles are created often, so those few that have to be deleted can easily be deleted at PROD or AFD. Regards SoWhy 22:28, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
I have yet to see someone create an article about a non-notable rock. :P If they did, I find it hard to believe that anyone would contest the PROD. And if they did, it would get speedily snowed on AFD anyway. This type of thing isn't a problem, as it doesn't happen often enough for the existing processes to fail to cope with it. If we had to create a category for every single object that isn't going to be notable (yes, this specific key-shaped piece of metal is awesome, because it opens my door) then we'd fill up all of time and space and various other dimensions with CSD criteria... :) Ale_Jrbtalk 00:16, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
"and it should not need to go to prod...".
Wrong. Mistake number one. Everything should go to XfD, except for uncontroversial things that should go to PROD. PROD is our catch-all deletion process. CSD is process number 0, the tacked-on bit on the front that exists purely to keep the load on PROD and XfD manageable. "Would consistently be deleted at PROD" is not the sole criterion for CSD. Happy‑melon 21:47, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

WP:Attack page

I'm coming around to the idea that G10/Attack page has more subtleties than we want to handle here at CSD (currently, we say very little about it). I brought up the idea of either deleting or being more careful with WP:Attack page a while ago; I guess I'm now leaning toward the latter, although that might be an uphill battle ... the page is rarely edited, and people tend to talk about G10 stuff here. Thoughts?

Example: I just deleted "alex is an convicted terrorist born in 2000 lives in hong kong"; the title didn't mention the full name. A lot of pages that don't mention a specific subject (especially a specific person) don't get deleted as G10, but even though the vast majority of readers won't know who was meant, there's a good enough chance that some 9-year-old Alex in Hong Kong is being targeted here that I didn't want to risk leaving the page up. I have an app that scans the G10 queue every 5 minutes, and other admins usually get to the G10s before I do ... that gives you an idea how diligent we're being about attack pages, which is good. - Dank (push to talk) 15:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Lengthy, with 2 proposals.
I think one reason it's not talked about much is because it's the sort of "oh duh, I know what that is if I see it". Not entirely accurate, like your example above, and I agree with full of not. I entirely agree with your opinion on name; the so-called article also has subject, context, claim which is pretty much a checklist of the "good starters". No Google hits? Might be in some Chinese sources we'd never understand, have to consider that. Born in 2000, 9 years old? Maybe it was a conviction in 2000? ... These are the things we're supposed to think about and it can save a lot of articles. Even if we hate their topic or loathe their very existence, and a put a PROD on a day later when it's clear the creator doesn't want to talk... 'tis just how it goes.
--Here's a proposal-- Particularly strict enforcement for things that generally make the encyclopedia look horrible with terrible PR if ever discovered or grabbed by Google. Things like terrorism, murders, rapes (any jail time with a reference?), race-sensitive remarks, threats of violent crime. Zero tolerance on any of these without at least one reference, or automatic CSD tag. Extra-strict enforcement on BLP articles articles as well. Anything with a name, period, and a thousand nasty warnings if a name + info that could lead to discovery are there, etc. These can "look harmless" and are often allowed through, but it's still BLP and it doesn't matter if its' 5 years old or 5 seconds old. We can treat the new editors in a proper way and still not allow the project to be tainted. ... and hey we'd have far less trouble later on with BLP issues in existing articles in the future if contributors were literally forced to understand it first.
--Alternate idea-- encourage more use of G3/hoaxes. That would cover a lot of what I claimed were extra-terrible. Generic duck test + any generic internet search to determine would be more than enough, if there are no citations to look at. Quite obviously a 9-year-old from Hong Kong isn't going to be a convicted terrorist... and no source. If it's legit, they can learn about the process, even, so anything in the future should have no problems. Bland statements and insults like "alex gets the worst grade becaues he's an effing idiot in all his classes" would fit G10 but too "normal" for G3. Yeah... terrorism claims? Felony charges? Even small BLP infractions? imo G3 could work. I hate 'encouraging' duck tests, but they're pretty damned effective. So, beyond this even expand G3 or create new for BLP? ♪ daTheisen(talk) 16:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Oh, and one rebuttal to a question that should be raised-- if someone claims we're just censoring because of race (one direction or another), we can easily point to how race wasn't the matter that suggested deletion, and it was everything else instead, Including links to BLP, GNG and a few specific essays on such things. We maybe could give a link to WP:WEIGHT or other things we're supposed to think of about the source of this sort of info, but too technical, I would think. ...Thoughts? ♪ daTheisen(talk) 16:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I think that G10 works quite well, and unlike some tags almost all G10 tags are correct. We made a big change earlier this year when we decided that taggers should blank G10s as well as tagging them, and hopefully this has improved things. I don't think we should reclassify some G10s as G3 - we have various ways to prioritise the deletion of G10s and I'm pretty confident that the average G10 gets deleted quicker than the average G3. One change we could consider is to have a separate template generating a slightly different warning for attacks on entities as opposed to people. The other change I'd like to see is to link the G10 notification to Huggle so that edits by people who've just written G10s get watched closely by hugglers. ϢereSpielChequers 16:16, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Enthusiastic support for all of that, WSC. - Dank (push to talk) 16:21, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I've knocked up an alternate warning message at {{AttackOrg}} but it would need someone a bit more template savvy to change the template generated by {{G10}}. Ideally I'd like to see it offer two alternate templates to warn the author with; this for attacks on organisations and current one for attacks on individuals. ϢereSpielChequers 17:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Template generated by {{G10}}? Do you mean the warning message? That's more a twinkle issue...Tim Song (talk) 17:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Its not just a Twinkle issue, as anyone tagging an article as an attack gets prompted to paste that warning on the author's talkpage. But I appreciate someone who uses Twinkle should make any changes as it would have to be Twinkle compatible, and I have yet to try Twinkle. If Twinkle automates the process and can't handle giving taggers a choice of warning message at that stage, then perhaps we need two versions of {{G10}} - one for attacks on individuals and one for other attacks. ϢereSpielChequers 17:49, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
The newest TW fix for A10 permits passing an parameter to all warning messages, but it's one warning/criterion. So {{db-g10-notice}}, which TW uses, will need to be modified to incorporate both and switch between person/organization depending on the parameter passed. As to the G10 template itself, we can use two separate templates or one template that switches depending on the parameter. Either should be easy to implement in Twinkle. Tim Song (talk) 18:13, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
(←) I've edited {{db-g10}} to accept an optional "org" parameter. {{db-g10|org=yes}} produces

{{db-g10}}

while {{db-g10}} produces

{{db-g10}}

Tim Song (talk) 20:30, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, that looks good. Will it be made an option in Twinkle, or do people have to key org=yes? ϢereSpielChequers 20:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
I edited {{db-g10-notice}} to accept an "org" parameter as well. I put up a demo in my sandbox. Now it's a matter of editing Twinkle...Tim Song (talk) 20:58, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm being stupid I'm sure, but I can't see the difference in those two templates. GedUK  20:51, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
There's a small difference in the name of the template for posting on the author's talkpage. It generates one of two different templates ϢereSpielChequers 20:58, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
On second thought, I created {{db-attackorg}} and {{db-attackorg-notice}} for Twinkle use (and they are cleaner anyway). Demo of the first is below; the second is the same is {{db-attack-notice|org=yes}}.
Now the Twinkle edit consists of inserting about 7 lines on code in twinklespeedy.js. But it's probably a good idea to let someone else take a look. Tim Song (talk) 21:38, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Twinkle test results: tag, notice. Tim Song (talk) 21:42, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Interpretation of new A10 criteria

I've come across this one a few times, most recently with Slumgullion nail. Someone copies and pastes existing Wikipedia article A into new article B, and uses the "replace all" function to make it look like the text from A describes B. The title of B is not a plausible redirect to A. Does this qualify under A10, or as G3? KuyaBriBriTalk 19:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Just came across it again at Pascal's hexagon. KuyaBriBriTalk 19:58, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Looks like A10 fits it: "A recently created article with no relevant page history that duplicates an existing topic, and that does not aim to expand upon, detail or improve information within any existing article(s) on the subject, and where the title is not a plausible redirect." The article/s that you are mentioning are:
A) Recently created,
B) Duplicating an existing topic,
C) Not plausible redirects,
D) And do not aim to expand upon information within the existing article.
Therefore they're deletable under A10. Kind regards, SpitfireTally-ho! 20:11, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
You could also delete them under G6 as copy-and-paste page moves, although this creates some problems as to whether or not the page should be moved or not (normally {{db-copypaste}} is used with the expectation that the page will be deleted, and then have the page it was copied from moved to itself). SpitfireTally-ho! 20:15, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
If it's the same text, then it does almost always not describe the new subject, does it? So it's a blatant hoax per G3. And if not, it's a copyright violation under G12. Just because it's from Wikipedia, it does not mean that there is no copyright that can be violated after all and a copy+paste move of such a kind (i.e. without attributing that it came from another article) violates the licenses under which the editors of the original page have contributed their material. Regards SoWhy 20:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

There you go Kuyabribri, A10, G6, G12, or G3 . (Although G3 and G6 are a bit dubious). Regards, SpitfireTally-ho! 20:33, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

F7 etiquette

I've recently seen an F7 deletion, even though the image was tagged {{hangon}}, with a request to see a discussion at WP:NFCR, where various people had found the image to be at least potentially of some merit.

Although I haven't taken it up with Explicit (talk · contribs), my concern is that automatic tools that now exist make it very easy to automatically empty whole categories, without the deleting admin necessarily ever looking at what objections to deletion may have been raised on the image page.

Here is another example, which I did raise with Fastily (talk · contribs), but that user is mostly off-wiki at the moment.

IMO, if even a half-coherent defence for an image has been argued on the page, then WP:CSD is no longer appropriate, and the image ought to go to WP:IFD.

Also, if the defence for an image is rejected, the person who put up that defence should get some notice, both that the image has been deleted, and some reasoned argument as to why.

Should WP:CSD be amended to add some guidance to this effect? At the moment it gives no guidance as to how to proceed if objections are made to deletion; or any recognition that a deleting admin has even seen a hold-on tag. Jheald (talk) 12:49, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

To make this more concrete, I propose adding the following to the end of F7

If an objection to the proposed deletion is raised, and the objection has any prima-facie coherence, then the file should normally be referred to WP:FFD (or alternatively, the CSD tag be removed). If there is not even a remote possibility that the objection might succeed, the objector should nevertheless be notified that their objection has been seen and rejected.

Thoughts? Jheald (talk) 11:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose It seems to me that administrators are supposed to have the judgment necessary to decide whether to speedily delete or remove the CSD tag and list at WP:FfD. After all, this page states: "Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases." Therefore, if "the objection has any prima-facie coherence," as you wrote above, the administrator should already know that the file would not be considered an obvious case and that speedy deletion would not be appropriate. If you disagree with an F7 tag on a file you did not upload, you of course may remove it; if you disagree with an administrator's F7 speedy deletion of a file, you may take the case to WP:DRV. But your proposed addition to the criterion in question is wholly unnecessary. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 17:24, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
It's far from unnecessary. WP:CSD sets out the framework within which admins exercise judgment and the proper procedure. There is an issue of procedure here, and another issue of the framework for judgment. Both need attention.
Firstly, admins are not giving any acknowledgment of having seen and considered objections to F7s. That needs to be fixed.
Secondly, a number of admins believe that the instruction "not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases" does not apply to what they call "pseudo-speedy deletions" (eg here). That also needs to be fixed.
In an ideal world, what you write might be appropriate. But as things stand, this clarification is needed. Jheald (talk) 22:31, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, but I disagree. Regarding your first point, administrators are not required to acknowledge that they have read and considered objections to speedy tags. You're talking about just those tagged with F7, but I'm talking about speedy tags in general. Say an article is tagged for speedy deletion under A7, and the author puts a {{hangon}} tag on the page and posts on the talk page. If an admin is considering following through with the speedy deletion, it is assumed that they will consider the author's arguments. Our admins aren't perfect, so maybe some delete without reading the author's arguments, but I fail to see any reason why forcing admins to post somewhere to acknowledge reading objections is necessary. Regarding your second point, that is a matter regarding admin conduct and not the F7 criterion itself. I suggest you bring that up at the village pump instead of here. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 05:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
On the second point: this page is the page for policy discussion as to when and whether items should be speedily deleted or not. From your first reply above, I think my understanding of policy is no different to yours: as you yourself write, a key principle of WP:CSD is "not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases". But in my view clarification is needed as to how this applies to F7. F7 is often used, probably rightly, more like a WP:PROD than a CSD, with a lower threshold for tagging (the so-called pseudo-speedy deletion). But that being the case, it should be made clear that when an active objection is brought to F7, the full CSD threshold should apply before deletion.
On the other point: if you sincerely believe that "administrators are not required to acknowledge that they have read and considered objections to speedy tags", then I can only respond that then they damn well should be. According to recent press, see eg the most recent signpost, WP is haemorrhaging contributors – to the tune of almost 50,000 simply in the first three months of this year – and they key issue they identify is arbitrary and uncommunicative treatment by established "insiders". This is the #1 issue threatening WP's continued health and survival. If you think it is appropriate for content to be deleted without objectors getting even the slightest recognition that their objection has been considered, then God help us – because we certainly wouldn't be helping ourselves. Jheald (talk) 12:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
I generally do try to leave the user of a {{hangon}} (or its equivalent in the image world) a note on their talk page if deletion still turns out to be warranted, but I can see why some people don't—all that tends to get you is more "Butbutbutbutbut!", if not outright abuse. Courtesy goes both ways. I personally believe in providing that courtesy even if it isn't often returned, but the more calmly we all communicate, the more people will be willing to communicate. Seraphimblade Talk to me 14:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Indeed. The more fairly and reasonably everyone behaves, the better. As for "Butbutbutbutbut!", this is actually how the deletion process tells people to behave, to try and avoid escalating to WP:DELREV; and being able to handle the "customer relations" appropriately in connection with any action is perhaps the most fundamental qualification needed for being an admin. Jheald (talk) 15:15, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Since the discussion above seems to have run its course, I propose to go ahead now and add the text proposed. Jheald (talk) 15:15, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Also oppose. Admins are supposed to use judgment, which from what I can see, we do. No consensus whatsoever to add this. Stifle (talk) 15:58, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
  • CSD is supposed to be for open-and-shut cases, not cases which require judgment. And the point about dealing transparently with people who have made objections remains. Jheald (talk) 21:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Let me clarify what Stifle wrote. Admins are supposed to use judgement to decide whether or not a case is open-and-shut. Our views of speedy deletion are similar, Jheald, in that we agree on using it with caution and only in the most obvious cases – but that doesn't mean every F7 where the uploader raises objections can be a case where the speedy is declined. Admins must use judgement at that point: If the objections are coherent and it's not an open-and-shut case, send it to FfD; if they aren't and it's an obvious F7 case, then speedily delete. If you feel an admin is applying F7 correctly, take it to WP:DRV.
And like Stifle, I'd like to point out that there's no consensus to add this – in fact, only you have expressed support for it – so you should not add it. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 14:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Dated Speedy?

With all the discussion above about "rescuable" CSDs, how about splitting CSD into two categories: speedies that should be deleted ASAP, and everything else.

Change the speedy tags to something like {{tl|prod}} which turns into {{tl|dated prod}} when subst'd.

This will make it a little harder to tag things but it will give 12- or 24-hours or whatever before the timeout expires. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:25, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm a little skeptical. We ought not make things more complicated; the existing 3 channels of deletion are complicated enough, and NP patrollers find it quite difficult to learn to use the right one. I agree we need a solution to over-rapid deletion, but I'm reluctant to do something like this. It will be too difficult choosing between them. I don;t think we can go by class of speedy, since so many A7s and G11s are pure trivial vanity that really do need to go as fast as possible but should not be overtagged as Vandalism. I don;t want to rule it out though, because we do need to do something to give people a chance to write articles. David, can you work out some details and examples? DGG ( talk ) 05:35, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
AFAIK, general practice is that certain types of CSD do already have a slightly higher priority, particularly G3s, G10s, and G12s (copyvios and attack pages). A7s/G11s usually are not a huge hurry to delete, as those are potentially salvageable. However, this seems to be mostly common sense; I doubt that we need any sort of actual physical demarcation for which speedies should be taken care of first. GlassCobra 16:38, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
If technically feasible, I wholeheartedly support making A1 and A3s and to a lesser extent, A7s not propagate into CAT:CSD until a set time (a few hours) after creation regardless of when they are tagged (we've discussed this before; I think there was a technical hurdle which is what led to things like {{Hasty}} and changing the mediawiki messages at newpages to tell patroller to patrol from the end of the queue), but this would need to be automatic and we would need a much better way to stop creators from removing tags in the intervening time.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:50, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Alternatively, we could just ask NPPers to wait more then 1/2 a second when tagging as A1 or A3 ;).
I think that rather then changing the current speedy deletion process/templates. It would be better to create a new template, say {{csd-wait}}, which says something like "this article currently meets CSD A3/A1, but deletion is pending to allow the creator time to expand the page. Please do not mark this page for deletion in the meantime. If the page is not expanded in a reasonable length of time, it will be deleted.". NPPers could add this template to a page, watchlist the page, leave a helpful message for the creator, and then come back to it later. Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 17:00, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I like that idea very much, and is so much less complicated than the initial proposal outlined above. ArcAngel (talk) 18:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
You guys apparently indented as responses to my post... see {{Hasty}}, already referenced, created for just this purpose. As for telling people to wait, we already do that. As I also noted, that's why we have the mediawiki message to patrol from the back end of the log at the top of newpages. It doesn't work and it will never work in the wild-wiki-west without an imposed solution.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
For what it's worth I've just made the message explicit about not tagging moments after creation. See the mediawiki message at the top of Special:Newpages.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
As far as I understood, {{hasty}} is for admin use after tagging (and biting), my template idea (partly prompted by the hasty template),is for use by NPPer before tagging, and therefore it would avoid bite. - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Aha. I have deleted the redirect I made from it to hasty (which is not restricted to admins!) Go for it. However, It still is a stop gap measure hoping to preempt other NPPers who are on the same line with you and may come to the article first.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 10:57, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I think at least half the newbie BITE on a typical article comes with the tagging. Imagine writing the first sentence of your first article and hitting save to make sure it works. The save goes through and you continue editing only to get a strange "edit conflict" message. You return to the article and see it is tagged for deletion. This scenario happens quite often, I am sure, and a fair % of those people will just say 'fuck it' and leave without even bothering to re-save what they already wrote.

My ideal solution to this problem would be a software delay whereby a newly created article is visible to no one (including search engines) until some fixed amount of time - perhaps 30 minutes. Then it would be less of a problem if a NPPer tags it within 10 secs of becoming visible. Sure attack pages would technically exist for 30 minutes, but since no one could see them it wouldn't really matter. (Deleted attack pages technically still exist as it is.) The main downside to this idea is that it is hard to get the devs to act, as they have tons of work to do at all times.--ThaddeusB (talk) 23:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

If this could actually be done, it would be great. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:23, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
I second that. It would seem a lot less bitey if this could actually be implemented. ArcAngel (talk) 04:53, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Ugh...sorry, but I don't think this is a good idea. Making CSD tagging more complicated is really unnecessary. I know anti-WP:BITE efforts are a big deal recently, but as a NPPer, I don't really see this as being very useful. My two cents. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 05:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we need to avoid overcomplicating things, I suspect that many of the problems at speedy deletion arise from it already being quite complex. That said I think that a short period of grace could make the system less complex for the various participants, but as pointed out above that period of grace should not involve template and counter template scaring off the newbies. However I disagree with the "software delay whereby a newly created article is visible to no one" approach, as this would make things way too easy for the cyber bullies as they could still email the link to an attack page and have it seen by far more people if it was up for an extra 30 minutes. My preferred option is to split the queue and NPP into three rather than the current two. An Antechamber where only bad faith articles such as attack pages and vandalism are deleted. Then after the article has been up for a certain period of time (at least one hour perhaps 24) it would go through Special Newpages as at present. (The back of the unpatrolled queue would be unaltered). One of the simplifications is that A1 and A3 would not apply in the antechamber but would at Special Newpages - thereby resolving the current divide in the community between those who consider A1 and A3 tags in the first few seconds of an articles existence as overhasty and those who consider they are judging the article as submitted. ϢereSpielChequers 10:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Now that's an interesting idea. I like it, but in my experience some A1/A3 pages are clearly not going to meet A7/A9 even if expanded. I hate to be cynical, but I suspect there might be more G2 and/or G3 taggings if this idea was implemented. That is, if A1/A3 can't be used, just call it vandalism or a test. Thoughts? A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 20:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I see the concern, but I rather suspect anyone mistagging good faith articles as bad faith ones is liable to have that pointed out to them. I would hope that the more deletionist editors would steer clear of the antechamber and concentrate on Special Newpages. But I think two changes might assuage some concerns about the antechamber idea. Firstly if people have had articles deleted as G3 or G10 chuck any subsequent articles by them straight into Special Newpages with no time in the antechamber. Secondly allow userfication as an option in the antechamber, many of the most hopeless A7s are really userpages and whilst tests are I believe rarer I see no harm in turning a newbies test into their sandbox. ϢereSpielChequers 19:29, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I suppose it's true enough that such mistaggings are, well, mistaggings, and that they would be identified as such. This is an interesting idea indeed; please let me know if you pursue it any further. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 21:55, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

As ever, strong oppose any delayed deletion for speedy categories which would give users the chance to remove deletion tags from inappropriate articles. Stifle (talk) 16:00, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I don;t see that as the key problem. We have technical means of keeping a list of those that the tag was ever applied on, and qwuite a lot of people following CSD. I'm not sure many really bad articles have ever escaped us this way. DGG ( talk ) 23:29, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

G7 clarified

This edit clarifies G7 so that an talk page cannot be deleted by blanking unless the only editor is also the only editor of the article page. Likewise, once someone besides the creator has made a significant edit to a talk page, the article cannot be G7'd. I can't imagine that G7 was intended any other way. Making this explicit should prevent a repeat of this, as discussed here. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

"Likewise, once someone besides the creator has made a significant edit to a talk page, the article cannot be G7'd." So say I am discussing a new page with its creator on its talk page, and he is the only significant contributor to the page. If he consents to deletion of the page, can it still be deleted under G7? I would hope so. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 14:45, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

"Deletable category" process?

It's happened time and time again - I go into process speedy deletions, and the C1 categories are there with no indication that the required four-day waiting period has passed. I have to go on WP:AGF to delete them, since the categories' histories do not indicate when the last title was removed. Additionally, it's somewhat ambiguous - does it have to be tagged for four days, or sit empty for four days before being tagged? Noting the fact that there is no history of contents preserved in the category itself, when I stumble upon it, I have no idea if the waiting period has passed or not, and thus only the editor that removed the last title from the category knows for sure if the waiting period had passed.

Is it possible to set up a dated "deletable category" process like we have for files? We currently have "deletable image", and that works quite well, allowing files so tagged to sit in holding categories until their day comes up, and then get deleted when it's their time. I don't see why this can't be done with C1. This will allow administrators to verify that the category has been empty for the required four days based on the dated tag, and then delete them after the required waiting period.

Considering this is a process that would be nearly identical to the deletable image process, this should be fairly easy to implement, and to add to Twinkle and other such tools. SchuminWeb (Talk) 23:12, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I'd rather just abolish the 4-day waiting period. If anyone has a halfway decent reason for wanting it, it can easily be undeleted or recreated (its not like most categories have much content anyway). Mr.Z-man 01:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
How do you easily restore a deleted category? You have to do the restore while an external cache is available, or you can trance down the editor that emptied the category and rollback those edits, to find the content. Categories are not like articles where there is a history of what the contents were. That is part of the reason we have a separate process to empty and delete these. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:23, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
The category description page (the thing that is deleted) is just a page like any other wiki page. Anything categorized to it will remain categorized once it is deleted - the link on the associated article will just be red instead of blue. For example, if someone deleted Category:Living People its not like all the articles that contain the text "[[Category:Living People]]" will suddenly loose that text. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:32, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
True. Except that most editors who want to avoid going to CfD simply delete the entries before they nominate the category. The problem is that there is no way to watch the contents of a category so it is not easy to observe this type of problem. On the other hand there are a large number of these that are acceptable, like when a project is renamed and all of the assessment categories need to be renamed. So with the wait and the chance for admins to look into the reasons for the deletion, we can catch a good number of out of process emptying of categories. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:45, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
How exactly does the wait help with that? (Considering also that the wait currently works on the honor system). Mr.Z-man 05:14, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
If someone went along and emptied the category, it would be just as much work to revert his edits with a 4 day wait as without. Mr.Z-man 01:37, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Strong support I proposed something just like this several months ago, but apparently nothing ever came of it. The system already exists for images, so it shouldn't be hard to adapt it for categories as well. Nyttend (talk) 02:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
By the way, I don't think we need to wait several days for the deadend category to be deleted — under CSD G8, we always delete the images-to-be-deleted-from-certain-date categories as soon as they're emptied (Category:Orphaned non-free use Wikipedia files as of 6 December 2009 will have plenty of images until early tomorrow, but it will likely be deleted less than 24 hours from now), and I don't see how this is different. After all, the deadendpages template has now been retargeted for the December category. Nyttend (talk) 02:58, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, those maintenance categories aren't really the same thing. I usually zap those with a G6 as soon as they're empty. SchuminWeb (Talk) 03:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Martial arts schools

Where exactly do these fall in the spectrum of criteria for speedy deletion? Are they outright spam (promoting one's own self-made school) or should they be included under some form of A7? I see these come up a lot because I'm notified when a certain string of words comes up in the IRC recent changes feed.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

You mean "school" as in "school of thought", not "local high school", right? Meanings 3/4 rather than 1/2? Happy‑melon 21:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Well the advertising (G11) category applies to all subjects, so any purely ad-like entry is eligible for that. You appear to be referring to "schools of thought" which wouldn't be eligible under A7 (and shouldn't be), but if you are actually referring to "training facilities" that would fall under A7 as a business. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:45, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
If you mean "school" as in brick-and-mortar place, treat it like any other business or local non-profit. If it's part of a chain treat it like any other chain business. If you mean "school" as in "school of thought" treat it the same as you would schools of thought in literature, architecture, music, or any other form of arts. A7 applies to organizations, but has generally not included organizations offering generalized instruction, e.g. primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools. I'm not sure if schools like "Acme Hebrew School" or "Acme Karate School" or "Acme Barber College" qualify for A7. When in doubt, don't speedy. Unless the number of such schools that don't qualify for any other CSD but which wouldn't stand a snowball's chance at AFD is great, PROD or AFD is probably the way to go. If the number is great we may need to clarify A7. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:23, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
If the article is blatant promotion, though, G11 does still apply, as it does to anything that's promotional. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:29, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

School/style. They show up all the time and remain on Wikipedia until they are discovered. This fake school/style was on Wikipedia for several months until it was rediscovered by the IP user. We need people like him discovering these things.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:43, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems that what you are talking about is creation of articles about something which has no or virtually no other documentation, and is written by one person trying to promote it. In this case if the "school" does not exist then it is a hoax, if it just about exists, invented by that one person, then it is promotion. In either case the fact that it is a school of martial arts makes it no different from any other hoax/promotion article. If the hoax/promotion is blatantly obvious then CSD covers it, otherwise it is a case for PROD or AfD. If the same person keeps creating more such articles then further steps should be taken about that individual, perhaps having them blocked if nothing else works. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:08, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

discussion that would impact CSD

Wikipedia talk:User access levels#Be autoconfirmed to create a page? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:43, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

"Aim to" in A10; what does it mean, how is it applied; what does it add?

Near the end of the A10 debate, the wording was still in flux until the last moment. The final version states in pertinent part: "does not aim to expand upon, detail or improve information within any existing article(s) on the subject,..." (emphasis added). I have no idea how to parse "aim to"; I have no idea what the words mean in this context or how they can be applied meaningfully. Can someone please provide an example of article content, properly deleted under this criterion, where "aim to" is of value in assessing the applicability of the criterion, over the text without it? And an example of the opposite: an article that would have been deleted but for these words being in the mix? The phrase appears purposeless to me, and adds ambiguity by that lack of purpose. The only way I can see to apply "aim to" is to put on my Carnac the Magnificent turban and try to divine what the article creator might intend to add that they did not include in the submission. If someone can explain that would be great. If not, simply removing the words, with no other change, seems to leave in place suitable language.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:33, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I think we should just remove the words "aim to": the sentence which would remain would be much clearer, and I see nothing wrong with that shortened version. Looking at the discussion on this page about the proposal to create CSD A10 I can see no prior discussion of these words, and discussion after they were included has been almost entirely critical of the words. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
That's true. Have you asked User:Backslash Forwardslash, who added them? A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 06:02, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

A comment regarding the application of A10

Earlier today, the newly-coined A10 speedy criterion was successfully invoked to deal with a page in Portuguese that was listed at WP:PNT on the grounds that the article was nothing more than a Portuguese translation of the existing English article. Now I have no problem with invoking A10 in such a situation, but I think there should be a way to notify both nominator and deleting admin that in such a situation a transwiki to the correct wiki could be considered before deletion. Transwikis are a common outcome of WP:PNT entries.

Perhaps a companion template could be created, stating that a transwiki is awaiting approval from the administrators of a foreign-language wiki. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 00:45, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think A10 covers such articles. It is for situations where a new page represents already existing information in an inferior way than the current article. A translation is by definition not inferior though. I would suggest we add a note to A10 that translations of our articles are only eligible if transwikiing them would be impossible or pointless (for example because a better version exists in that language already). Regards SoWhy 01:44, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I would support the addition of such a note. A10 isn't designed to be a sort of reverse-A2 (which might not be the most apt description, but it's close enough). A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 05:59, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Misapplication by unforeseen loophole?. I think we mean and always meant tacitly by "an existing topic", "an existing English Wikipedia topic"; maybe we need to say that explicitly.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:02, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I have added "navigation templates that link only to red links" to criterion G8. I do not expect the addition to be controversial, but I still want to note the change on this talk page. This issue was previously discussed here and here, and there seemed to be consensus to treat such deletions as "housekeeping". However, I think G8 is a better fit than G6 for these types of deletions. Please reword or revert if needed. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 17:13, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. Templates matching that criterion are consistently deleted at TFD, and it can be objectively determined whether the links go to existing pages or not. Navigation templates depend on having something to navigate to, so G8 is a good match. --RL0919 (talk) 17:51, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
I removed this. There are too many exceptions and too few times when this would gum up TfD.
Some exceptions are templates which are
  • transcluded into any non-discussion page, e.g. an article or policy page. They should be de-transcluded first.
  • undergoing active development - give the editors a chance to make it useful
  • linked from or transcluded into an active discussion - don't delete what is being discussed
  • linked to from non-discussion project space, perhaps as an example of how not to do a template
and templates - if not useful, remove from project space first, if useful, don't remove
  • that have value beyond the links which they contain - some templates are a mix of navigation and non-navigation. Some contain examples of how to do intricate coding which serve as good examples of how to do certain things. These might be better userfied or refactored as "example templates" and referenced from project space or transcluded to meta-wiki.
I do appreciate the sentement, and if this were a big problem gumming up RfD we would probably need a narrow SD category, T4:Orphan categorization templates or something similar.
davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:07, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
I think most of the exceptions you list can be summed up using similar wording to that given in T3, which limits the criterion to templates "that are not employed in any useful fashion". --RL0919 (talk) 18:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
(ec) Let me first address your point about frequency. You're right that this does not take place frequently enough to merit its own criterion; however, as long as we are adding it to an existing criterion, frequency becomes a much smaller concern.
Now, about the exceptions... Based on the premise that navigation templates exist to facilitate navigation (I don't think anyone disputes this), I disagree that most of what you list should in fact be an exception or is enough to justify removing any mention of templates from G8:
  1. Transcluded into any non-discussion page - I do not see why this should be an "exception". It is standard procedure to remove transclusions of a template before or immediately after deleting it, including speedy deletions (e.g., criterion T2), and transclusions can easily be found via Special:Whatlinkshere and removed. Also, redlink-only navigation templates are almost always orphaned, so I can't see this ever being an issue.
  2. Undergoing active development - The principle that a page undergoing active development should not be immediately speedied, except in limited cases (e.g., vandalism, attack page, copyright violation), applies to all of CSD, so there seems to be no reason to specifically highlight this in the case of templates or criterion G8.
  3. Linked from or transcluded into an active discussion - It is not at all uncommon for pages nominated for deletion at TfD (or any other XfD) to be speedy deleted if one or more of the speedy deletion criteria apply. In fact, proper use of speedy deletion in such cases can be an effective time-saving tool. Speedy deletion should not be used "if a page has survived a prior deletion discussion", but there's no prohibition against using speedy deletion during a deletion discussion.
  4. Linked to from non-discussion project space - As with #1, this exception seems to be more theoretical than practical. I have never encountered anyone using a navigation template in the manner you suggest. In any case, single-use and -purpose examples of how not to make templates should be in code form rather than transcluded or linked (at TfD, single-use templates are always deleted or substed and deleted).
  5. Value beyond the links which they contain - I thought of this, and that's why I specifically limited the criterion to navigation templates, which have no value beyond the links that they contain. While some templates do have intricate coding, most navigation templates have relatively simple coding and redlink-only navigation templates almost never have any complex coding.
None of the other speedy deletion criteria are subject to requirements as stringent as "no incoming links from non-discussion pages" or "no mention in an ongoing discussion" and I don't see a reason why redlink-only navigation templates should be an exception. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 18:41, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
If the community decides this needs to go back, I would like to see it under a new T4 as suggested above.
Anyone have any idea of the frequency of this? Are we talking a few times a month or more or a few times a year? If it's just a few times a year let it go to discussion. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:10, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Why do you think a separate criterion is necessary? "Navigation templates that link only to red links" seems to fit in the category of "pages dependent on deleted or non-existent pages".
Mainly to prevent careless errors. By making it a template criteria, even a tired mind will remember template deletion has more work to be done. Yes, I know templates can fall under other Gx categories, but let's look at them. G5 and G7 when applied to in-use templates share the same concerns as this proposed addition to G8, and their application to in-use templates should probably be spun off to a T category or text added reminding deleting admins to check for transclusions. G6, technical deletions, is presumably being done by someone who has already thoroughly checked for bad side effects before making the deletion. The rest are very likely to be brand-new pages or usable revisions to roll back to. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:26, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
It's hard to know the frequency because I have the distinct impression, based on the consensus in the two discussions to which I linked, that these types of templates have usually been deleted under the "housekeeping" criterion (G6). –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 00:48, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Whether it is a new criterion or a clarification of G8 (G6 doesn't seem right to me), I think it makes sense to say something specific about this case, because there do seem to be a fair number that come through TFD. I'll look through the recent TFD logs and see if I can put together more specific info. I've never seen a template that was even mostly (much less all) redlinks survive TFD unless someone was working on turning the redlinks blue, and once it has some blue links then it would no longer qualify for the speedy. --RL0919 (talk) 15:41, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Black Falcon. Much of what Black Falcon says can be summarised in the words "most of the supposed exceptions apply just as much to other uses of CSD: why should this one be treated any differently?" I am in favour of restoring the words to the criterion. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:00, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Redirects from misspellings of an established user's userpage

I reverted this edit (I hit rollback accidentally instead of undo--sorry about that), which added to criterion U2 an exception for "redirects from misspellings of an established user's userpage". In such cases, I think it would be better for the established user to create a doppleganger account in order to avoid the risk of impersonation in the future (i.e., if another user creates an account at the misspelled user name and begins to impersonate the established user). –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 21:49, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the revert. There is no consensus to delete such redirects and one might not want to register all such accounts. (see below) Regards SoWhy 21:55, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
SoWhy do you mean to say that you agree with my edit? I was adding in the exception to clarify that such redirects should not be deleted under speedy criteria. Gigs (talk) 21:56, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, sorry, I somehow tried to combine two different sentences into one and lost half the meaning along the way. What I meant is this: I agree with the revert, since there was no discussion to change it. But I also agree with the edit itself, i.e. if we discuss to change it, I would favor it since creating doppelganger accounts is unneeded (since the software should prevent them from being registered anyway). Regards SoWhy 22:03, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Is there any page that specifically discusses how the software restricts creation of new accounts that have names similar to existing accounts? If impersonation will not be an issue due to built-in features in the software, then I too would support Gigs' addition. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 22:18, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

My edit was based on Wikipedia:Username policy which states:

If your username is commonly misspelled, consider helping people by adding a redirect from the misspelled username to your actual username. (Any user page can be created by any contributor, whether an associated account exists or not.)

So to be clear, my edit wasn't a proposal, it was reflective of this existing policy. If we decide it's too much instruction creep to mention it here, that's one thing. If we decide it's a bad idea for people to do that in general, then we probably need to go over to WP:U and make sure we have consensus to change the username policy to match. Gigs (talk) 22:22, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I have inquired about the issue of impersonation at Wikipedia talk:Username policy#Redirects from misspelled usernames, but as long as this is part of the policy, I don't think that it is instruction creep to add the exception to CSD. Unless you think more discussion or time to comment may be needed, please feel free to revert my edit at any time. Thanks, –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 22:38, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
There's no hurry. I'll give it a few more hours and readd it later tonight if there's no more significant objection. Gigs (talk) 22:41, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 Done Gigs (talk) 03:26, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Should unsourced become a speedy deletion criterion?

One of the things I've noticed at WP:NEWT is that whilst our policy is that data needs to be verifiable, many editors are working to an unwritten policy that new articles need to be verified by a source. My view on this is "Strong Neutral" as I think that either a consistent policy of all new articles require a source, or a reaffirmation of current policy would be far preferable to the current situation which I believe guarantees that newbies, established article creators and newpage patrollers will be bitten. Obviously redirects, Disambiguation pages and Lists don't need sources. But what do people think of requiring all other new articles to specify a source? (I gather the German Wiki has something like this which may even be automated). ϢereSpielChequers 11:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

  • If we did this and required that the source be reliable (i.e. not IMDB etc.), we could get rid of every other CSD criterion at a swoop.—S Marshall Talk/Cont 12:00, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I think it's quite enough that being unsourced is a reason to delete via PROD or AFD; those processes give people a week in which to track down and add sources, and a week in which newbies can learn not only the reason why they must add sources but also the mechanics of how to add sources. New articles that are not vandalism or libel or obvious A7s don't have to be deleted instantly just because they don't cite sources yet. If sources can't be added because the subject is truly nonnotable, keeping the article around for a week or so isn't going to harm the encyclopedia. +Angr 12:10, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Agree with Angr. While I support having some variant of this idea for BLPs, the simple fact of the matter is that if we implemented this policy, we would have to go around and delete hundreds of thousands of articles. If there simply are no sources anywhere, that is another matter and can be dealt with through existing processes, but this simply is too much. Tagging articles with {{unsourced}} may be a bit eventualist, but it has (mostly) worked for us so far. NW (Talk) 12:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
        • It would be an odd anomaly that all new articles created after a certain date had to have sources, but we could change the new article creation process to prompt authors for their source without necessarily deciding to delete all existing unsourced articles. ϢereSpielChequers 12:45, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Sources? I don't know. If its an experienced editor we expect them to be editing inline with the policies anyway. They'll probably include sources. If its an inexperienced editor there is a good chance they'll include inappropriate sources which will end up not being much better as editors will have to scrutinize sources instead of just the claims made in the article. I don't know if that will create more or less work or if it'll save more articles or not. Let's not forget that CSD is only supposed to delete things that aren't supposed to be here. If there are sources out there any article created shouldn't end up meeting CSD unless its created very badly.--Crossmr (talk) 14:32, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Absolutely not. To do so would be institutionalizing newbie biting. I like WPC's idea of making the article creation process prompt people for sources, but I do not think that articles should be speedily deleted based on that criterion - they need to be allowed some time for development. LadyofShalott 15:31, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • As Crossmr says, CSD should not be used to delete pages for reasons that are actually reasons for improvement (see editing policy and WP:BEFORE) but rather to remove pages quickly that for various reasons cannot be included at all. Regards SoWhy 16:35, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • No, no, ten thousand times no. First, we have the issue that most new editors don't understand the importance of sources. (Heck, a lot of experienced editors don't really get it.) So instead of educating them, we bite? Please, no. Second, unsourced does not equal unsourceable. If the article can not be sourced, it probably falls under another CSD criteria, or prod can adequately deal with it. If it is sourceable, then we now have an editing issue, not a deletion issue. Add the source, educate the editor, and move on.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 17:28, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Agree with above. In fact, if I can't find any sources for an article that I doubt sources exist for, I find PROD to be a very effective tool. If there is in fact a source that I couldn't find, it will get added. If there are no sources, it will get deleted. It's actually a perfect use of PROD. Just because no sources have been added doesn't mean they don't exist. It is not an obvious deletion, there's no reason why it needs to be done speedy, and rather than take pressure of other deletion methods, this is the perfect use for other deletion methods. Singularity42 (talk) 17:34, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Definitely not. SoWhy, Fabrictramp and others explain very well why this would be a very bad idea. Davewild (talk) 18:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Absolutly not per excellent comments above. Ikip (talk) 19:55, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Maybe for BLPs. But it would be a huge shift in policy to say that unsourced articles should be deleted, and I don't think it would be a shift for the better. -- Atama頭 01:47, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Certainly not. We've been over this before. it is not even a criterion for deletion via prod or AfD. The crirterion is unsourceable (unverifiable), meaning that they can not be sourced using resources available to at least some members of the Wikipedia cpmmunity. About half the articles brought to AfD for which this is the principal claim, do it fact get sourced, generally quite easily. Speedy deletion is for articles which do not even have a plausible chance of being kept, and nobody can tell this for an unsourced article without doing a proper search. No two people by themselves are really reliable for this. It has to be shown to the entire community, in the hope that somebody will know--and among us all, we're fairly good at this. Not individually--I'm supposed to be a professional at this sort of thing, and I don't always get them--I have limitations is what I know about well enough to find. Something may, for example, be trivially sourceable from Arabic online sources, let alone print, but I'll never find it. Others will.
As side issues: it inhibits article creation. People add articles, save, and then add the sources--it's a totally legit way to write. (at least i sure hope it is, because it's the way I write. ) Wikipedia is a cooperative project, and what one person does not finish, another will. DGG ( talk ) 02:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • BLP, 100%; Agreeing with Atama, mostly. When extreme claims of notability or other importance are given without sources that it alone should be CSD'd, immediately. We can't take any risks regarding spam, harassment or child privacy issues. Ever. Not if they're 99% avoidable. G10 already exists, but the wording doesn't include BLP-style hoaxes and it's meant for pre-existing pages, 1-liner vandalism or semi-hidden mention within articles, or other times we might blank a page for any reason. Harassment can take many forms besides this and should be picked up from the minute an article is created if we have a means of doing it. Because of the ethical and public safety issues of BLP, non-sourcing needs a category. G10 would still be needed for "normal" applications like we have today, but it's restrictive in some ways. I ran into this last night with a terrifying WP:YOUTH problem article and I put on a G10 and notice of blanking, but since it was the article's 2nd CSD tagging (an A7 was already there), it took quite some time to get seen. I know I "could" have removed the A7 so it would come up in the more vital category, but there's no policy for editors about shuffling tags. Far better and safer would be an alarm-sounding CSD type that would show up at the top of any admin list if looking through CSD candidates and demand immediate attention (sorry, I have no idea how your page actually works). Getting immediate attention is really important because an admin could either protect the page or block the user nearly instantly in a very dangerous situation. Sometimes and if the author is still online at the time it's pretty much an edit war until you get lucky and can report it somewhere-- At least I've spend a good deal of time constantly refreshing page histories of awful situations. I guess I'm talking about what would be a Wikipedia '911 tag'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Datheisen (talk • contribs)
  • If you tag it G10, it will appear in the relevant category, no matter what other tags are on the page, so that's not a valid concern. G10 serves us well to remove those articles that really violate BLP in a way that cannot be tolerated, i.e. harmful unsourced information and is not limited to any kind of page but includes any page that meets the criterion (i.e. almost everything you mentioned above or by G3 in the case of hoaxes). But making every unsourced BLP, even those with neutral or even positive information, a reason for speedy deletion would fundamentally alter our whole editing policy. If the information is not harmful (i.e. G10), then an unsourced article is not that harmful to the project that it has to be removed immediately but can be deleted via the normal venues. So please explain to me why an article like "John Doe is the president of <some small and unknown but real country>" needs to be removed immediately and without discussion. Regards SoWhy 10:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, I admit there are a lot of loopholess, and you've totally got me on a blanketing concept. My attempted semantics were that even "good" content like your example can still be vandalism, but no filter or bot would ever detect editor irony. If there's no way to detect it, it can't be seen, so you are correct-- it would be a large editing policy shift, since even if it only happened once every million edits it still is, and It's a basic AGF matter. To counter, I'll give a an instance of something contrary appearing ((in no way to I think this is bad)); what happens to a persons end up blocked/banned for "neutral" or harmless but stubborn like user page usage (neutral, boring text), but is an amazing article writer with 50+ FAs. Despite never harming or so much as made a single grammar error in the mainspace but their content is 'pre-disapproved'. Just saying, there are a few occasions where it can happen. Once in never, I know. Anyway-- You offer the simplest solution that I entirely forgot about-- just removing said dubious content if possible and G10 per norm if the article is dead. Question from that which I think I should know the answer to but don't: what if, after information that is cited but cited incorrectly or misquoted is there and needs to be removed, what then of the article? CSD it for being empty besides a name? Or just blank the thing if dangerous and G10 it ASAP? ♪ daTheisen(talk) 14:31, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • This suggestion comes up frequently, and it's simply a terrible idea. Most articles are created by new users who don't know anything about how to reference sources. Do we really want to delete articles that could easily be sourced just because the creator didn't know how? Even WP:BLP does not call for the removal of any unsourced material in biographies, just contentious material. CSD is intended only for articles for which we can presume an overwhelming consensus to delete at AfD, and clearly that does not exist in these cases. Appeal to privacy issues and harassment amount to moral panic - dealing with problem articles in a timely manner is all we need to do to protect innocent people. Dcoetzee 12:56, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • No way. Tons of useful articles are currently unsourced. The way to deal with them is to (a) add sources; (b) tag them as unsourced; or (c) use an existing deletion process so as to either be ignored for a week or to convince other editors that there's no possible way it can be sourced. Bongomatic 13:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Nope - not even I am that deletionist. I would strongly support the creation of a bot that put a PROD on every existing article which has been tagged as "unsourced" for over, say, six months; but this is just way too bitey. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:40, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • no - see WP:BEFORE. A WP:COPYVIO or WP:BLP violation would overrride WP:BEFORE, but WP:BEFORE applies to an ordinary article that has no sources. --Philcha (talk) 15:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Reset button The problem isn't one of needing a new CSD, but rather of education about the proper use of the current criteria. I think that is where discussion on this matter should be focused. Not every problem can be solved by making a new rule. When admins see an obviously bad speedy tagging, not only should they decline it, but follow through and explain on the tagger's talk page why it was declined and how to properly use that tag. Let's re-set this discussion to explore how we might better inform csd taggers about these issues. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
For how that hasn't really worked, see WP:NEWT :( Well no. There was no education there, mostly just lecturing. You're right, though. But since every A7 is different you can only get so far. I'd easily slide in under the line of "troubled patrol" at 90%ish on selections, which I know is pretty bad... please sign me up? Ooh. how about you throw in G10 at the same time? Equally as subjective and hard to let by if it's a SPA writing (though the article of course is made fairly). This is why my idea in general is to encourage incubate/etc and encourage use of the newpage and new gushingly friendly templates. Less total questions. Incubation would be good, too. To be more specific, there needs to be another step-down on an option besides just leave the article alone vs CSD... if an actual process for the article that changes its future were "official", no one would have to feel guilty for something borderline, or try to determine AGF, etc. I know it's good to work on the things a bit to reach a small stub status to survive a deletion, but not everyone always has time for that out of the blu, and it can be extremely time consuming at times. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 20:31, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
There is already "another step-down besides leaving the article alone vs CSD". It's called the {{notability}} tag. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:23, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • No I know people chafe at this declaration, but we really have gone over this in detail before. I'm flummoxed that people don't understand the relationship between barriers to contribution and decreased volume of contributions. I feel strongly that we need some criteria to filter unwanted articles out in the short term (which would encompass CSD) and unwanted articles out in the long term (AfD), but neither of those two should turn on what sources are present in the article. Protonk (talk) 21:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, yes, yes a thousand times yes to a process to delete wholly unsourced articles, such as was proposed at Wikipedia:Requests for verification (including the modifications suggested on its talk page), but no, never, to a pure speedy criterion addition to the project page here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:41, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Goodness no. Nothing of the sort. The thing to do, when you come across an article that's unsourced that troubles you, is to source it. If you think the article makes problematic statements, cut those, then source it. We have a criteria for unsourced BLPs that have no redeeming value, it's G10 or A7. One of the perils of deletion is always that we're getting rid of valuable information owing to a momentary inability to find good sources via cursory database search. We shouldn't raise that failing to the status of a virtue. RayTalk 01:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose Simply lacking references should not be grounds for speedy deletion. Unless it's extremely negative, an obvious hoax, or any other criteria that are already covered by the CSD. I fear that such deletions would only make newbies feel unwelcome. Reach Out to the Truth 19:55, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose as well. Go find sources, or tag the article. Debresser (talk) 20:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Strongest possible oppose Improve, don't delete. --Dweller (talk) 22:37, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I would support a PROD-like process (something in the spirit of Wikipedia:Requests for verification, whose original form I opposed at the time it was proposed), but not a straight-forward speedy deletion criterion. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 19:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
  • A noble idea that we aren't yet ready for. I would like to see us move in this direction with regards to sourcing and verification, and ideally in the future I would like to see a CSD set up to do this (coupled with a more controlled process for article creation), but clearly we haven't progressed far enough to implement this now. It would be a logistical nightmare with far too much imformation lost at once. Rome wasn't built in a day, and we require time to slowly up our standards of verification until it will be no big deal to implement this. ThemFromSpace 08:00, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • No, as the thing to do is look for an add sources first. Next, if you cannot find any, ask the article's editors and creator on their userpages if they could kindly add some. Third, ask a relevant Wikiproject. Only then after steps 1-3, should deletion be considered. Best, --A NobodyMy talk 01:23, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
  • No, there are hundreds of thousands of innocuous, unsourced articles. Some unsourced because content contributors chose to add material and not source it. Some unsourced due to summary style. No reason to develop a criteria for that. Also doesn't fit the CSD rules at the top of the talk page and would make an absolute MESS of the CSD queue for no reasonable gain. Protonk (talk) 03:08, 3 December 2009 (UTC) Whoops. Voted twice. Protonk (talk) 03:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
  • No you would have eliminated a large proportion of articles as they were created. It should not be a speedy delete criterion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:24, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
  • No - perhaps we need to clarify A7 to say that BLPs really need the sources that assert notability. While sourcing is obviously important in all of the articles, sourcing is absolutely critical only in BLPs. Demanding sources from all conceivable kinds of articles immediately is counterproductive. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 14:46, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
  • No there are plenty of articles on encyclopedic subjects which are unsourced, especially by new users. The way to deal with this problem is to find sources for the article. If this can't be done then the current deletion procedures allow the article to be deleted. Pages are supposed to be deleted when the content can't be improved to adequate standards, not simply because the article needs improving. Hut 8.5 15:28, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Possibly for BLPs, not viable for anything else. Stifle (talk) 15:57, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
  • strongly oppose even for bio articles. We already have criteria for removing unsourced negative content, and we have A7. I have seen too many cases where the initial draft includes unsupported claims of notability that are fully sources withign 48 hours, but someone tried to tag with A7. Such a criterion would only make such more likely to be delted before they cn be sourced. Many editors, even expedienced ones, put in content first and then add sources. As siad about this would enshire newbie biting and harm the project. DES (talk) 01:25, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose I would want to see more specific criteria laid out before its implementation, otherwise A7 or AfD would handle it. Thought I would like to add that as we move deeper into this information sharing era, that unsourced has become an increasingly more common problem on Wikipedia. Unsourced also referring to sources that lack credibility like music blogs (which in their own right might also be highly notable; we have seen many leading music industry professions use blogs as a means of reaching a wider readership). Mkdwtalk 17:29, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Opposed. Per this experience. Prod is bad enough. Pcap ping 21:02, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
  • No The policy is verifiability. So CSD could only apply to something which could obviously never be verified, and other categories already exist for that.--Rumping (talk) 13:15, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Actual practice and A10

Several editors in Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 December 28#Climategate scandal seem to think that certain types of forks, such as blatant forks or POV forks, should be deleted quickly.

Since policies and guidelines are supposed to reflect actual practice not vice-versa, it may be worth re-opening A10.

How do we, as editors, want to treat blatant POV forks vis-a-vis speedy deletion? We need to balance the idea that such forks are generally undesirable against the fact that on contentious topics such forks will be vocally defended, resulting in AFDs filled with drama, possible gaming, and the possibility of headcount-itis overcoming strength-of-arguement during AFD closure and DRV.

Personal disclaimer: Despite the drama, I prefer a discussion process for anything controversial. As such I'm fine with the current wording of A10. However, other editors appear to disagree and this needs at least a little discussion. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion should never be used to avoid legitimate discussion. A10 serves as a way to clean up new articles that already exist, not to remove forks and it was never intended as such. Forks may be blatant or POV, but unlike A10 cases, they show that one or more editors think that existing material should be reorganized in a certain manner and only discussion can reach a definite conclusion on how to treat such cases. If an admin went around speedy deleting forks, it would just generate more drama elsewhere (ANI, DRV etc.) and cries of admin abuse. Speedy deletion should not be used for controversial things, that's what we have deletion discussions for. Speedy deletion is for those cases, where XFD would not be able to handle it and where the outcome of a hypothetical XFD would always be delete. Regards SoWhy 16:55, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. It's my AFD closure being reviewed, and it had nothing to do with WP:CSD, and nor should it. Rd232 talk 16:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
And no speedy process should ever be used to avoid contentious disputes-they, in fact, show that discussion, rather than speedy deletion, is necessary. I can't see this proposal going anywhere. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:09, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Add HD or RD questions to A3

Every once in a while there are articles that are created by new users trying to ask a question that should have been asked at the reference or help desks (like Why maltese dog hair turns red?). I think those are already covered by A3 as "chat like comments" but would anyone mind it if we change the wording to the following in order to clarify it?

(new part in bold). Regards SoWhy 19:51, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I personally have no objections. In my opinion it's already covered, but it can't hurt to clarify. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 04:03, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
how frequent is this? There are a few a day, and depending on whether they are substantial I prod them or find some excuse to speedy them, & I would not mind it stated explicitly. But we would need to watch out for actual possible article content titled as such questions. DGG ( talk ) 01:07, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
Ehh, no objections...it's basically a minor wording change, although as DGG said, it would probably be useful to clarify between questions in titles with content vs. RD/HD questions in the articles. Ks0stm (T•C•G) 01:31, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't see that as a problem. A3 can only be applied if such things are the only content, so mistitled viable articles are not encompassed by such a change anyway. I'll add it now since no one seems to object. Regards SoWhy 19:29, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

In March 2009, after appropriate discussion and consideration, the words if possible were restored to WP:NFCC #10a, to indicate that while it is nice to have sourcing information beyond an immediate web address, it is not a policy requirement.

In a thread over at WT:NFC, User:Angusmclellan has now raised the issue of where this leaves tags {{di-no license}}, {{di-no source}} and {{di-no author}} and {{no copyright holder}}.

As this is basically a question about the details of CSD machinery, the best venue for such a discussion would seem to be here at WT:CSD.

Some preliminary thoughts, as it seems to me:

  • {{di-no license}}: Applies when no license tag at all has been provided. No change necessary.
  • {{di-no source}}: Applies when the uploader has given no source information at all (not even a webpage). No change necessary.
  • {{di-no author}}: Applies when no attempt at all has been made to fill out the author field, particularly if the image is being claimed as free. If the image is not being claimed as free, "Unknown" may be sufficient. No change necessary to the template?
  • {{no copyright holder}} : Should probably be used only when not even a webpage has been provided. Current wording of the template seems a lot more fierce than policy strictly requires.

As an example of the confusion in this area that may have been propagating, consider this deletion review, for a pair of legitimate fair use images which were deleted on the basis that they might in fact be public domain. Jheald (talk) 15:25, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

If uploaders act responsibly and supply real source information - and a random website isn't that - we and potential content re-users benefit by having a clear understanding of the copyright status of the material. Our readers also benefit by knowing where the image came from in the same way the providing references benefits them by telling them where the material in our articles came from. Readers can then consult the original material be it facts in a book or a photograph in an archive if they want more information. Unsourced material can be deleted from article although it needn't be deleted right now. Unsourced images can be deleted and they too aren't deleted immediately. In the case Jheald alludes to some two months were allowed to find the information. The sum and substance of the investigation appears to have been limited to leaving a message on the now-absent uploader's talk page so that the outcome was an easily predictable failure to find the source. Angus McLellan (Talk) 00:04, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Policy recognises that it is a fine thing to have more detailed source information -- but, per NFCC#10, it is not a requirement.
Indeed for many old photographs -- as most national copyright laws, including those of the U.S. and the U.K. recognise -- the actual original photographer may be completely unknowable.
The question now is where that leaves our tags. Jheald (talk) 11:38, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I'd never heard of {{di-no author}} and it doesn't appear to match with any of our image policies or deletion requirements. I've nominated it for TFD.
{{no copyright holder}} is, I think, mostly added by bots. It might be slightly WP:BITEy, but a substantial proportion of our image uploads are copyvios so I think it is OK to stay for now. Stifle (talk) 10:49, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Incubated articles and R2

I just closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A Marine Story as "incubate" and moved the article to Wikipedia:Article Incubator/A Marine Story. The instructions at WP:INCUBATE say to tag the mainspace redirect R2 as we do with userfication but the current R2 criteria excludes the "Wikipedia" namespace. I tagged it R2 anyway but perhaps an exception needs to be written into the R2 criteria for incubated articles. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:56, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. WP:CSD#R2 covers redirects from the mainspace to the userspace, which of course allows admins to userfy without leaving a redirect behind. Incubation is essentially another form of userfying, so I think this exception is a common-sense addition to the criterion in question. (Of course, I would prefer speedily deleting all redirects from mainspace to project-space, but that's another question entirely....) A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 05:20, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Moreover, I suspect this is common practice already among admins closing AfDs as "incubate." A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 05:21, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
I think it's arguable that G6 applies, though that's typically used for content that will return (such as cleanup before a page move), because it is uncontroversial, technical maintenance. However, I think WP:IAR applies here in that everyone agrees it should be deleted, and we've been doing it under R2 for a while, despite its lack of qualifying, and instruction creep is bad. I don't really agree with altering R2 nor do I agree with creating a new criterion for this trivial case. I think just replacing the instructions at WP:INCUBATE with G6 instead of R2 would be reasonable, and perhaps even make a specific template for G6 as applied to incubation (just like {{db-copypaste}} and {{db-histmerge}} exist. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 18:02, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Fork

Would someone please explain to this bear of very little brain the difference between a content fork and an article that qualifies for deletion under A10? — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 07:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

most of the time, I think a content fork will "expand upon, detail or improve information" - that is, it will rewrite the article from the unique POV of the forker. The value of the addition can be debatable, but I think A10 is aimed at the people who haven't figured out "redirect" and copy/paste an existing article at a new name instead. (at least, that's my interpretation). --Alvestrand (talk) 08:28, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Another example of an A10 would be if someone created an article at airoplane saying "An airoplane is a flying machine with wings" and going on in similar vein about fixed-wing aircraft for a paragraph or two. This doesn't contain mergeable material, is not a plausible redirect, and doesn't expand upon, detail, or improve information on the subject. Stifle (talk) 16:42, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

change the way we deal with G12

There is a problem here which has been bugging me for a while, and I think the fix is probably pretty simple, but it's always a good idea to run thess things up the flagpole before just doing them. The problem is that in the majority of cases, a copyright violation is the bigger problem, but not the only problem. Most of the time stuff that gets deleted as G12 would be deleted as G11 if we hadn't detected the copyvio. I try to always add a note to that effect to the creator's talk page, but I don't seem to be in the majority in taking this extra step. So they come back to look at their page, and find it's been deleted as a copyright violation. They go through the whole procedure outlined at WP:DCP and repost it, confident that it's problems have been overcome, and it's speedy deleted again as advertising. Everyone on both sides has just had a chunk of their time wasted. An easy way to prevent this would be to simply create a combined copyvio/advertising CSD template and enable it with Twinkle and Huggle, retaining the current tag for the rare cases where it's not just some company trying to post their latest press release or other PR material as an encyclopedia article. I can't think of a downside to this, but maybe I've missed something. Comments? Beeblebrox (talk) 20:23, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

  • Here's a mock up of what it might look like:


I agree that this can be a problem. I have tweaked your proposed wording a bit for the current wording of G11 ("unambiguously" instead of "blatant") but it's a good idea. Did you have a name for the template in mind? Regards SoWhy 20:39, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
I think it's a great idea, and would even consider including a link to WP:COI. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:46, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree. It would be very useful at WP:Suspected copyright violations. Theleftorium 20:54, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
I keep the following words set up in in a text file and very often add them to the G12 warning:

Please note that even if the copyright issue were resolved, the promotional tone of a company or personal website is likely be unsuitable for an encyclopedia article, which requires a neutral point of view.

I did suggest some time ago that they should be incorporated in the G12 warning template, but there was no response. They are aimed at the same problem - users painfully going through a copyright release to find their entry rejected on other grounds - but are rather more general than Beeblebrox' suggestion. JohnCD (talk) 21:02, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
A more generic solution - add an additional parameter "note=" to all db- templates, which would show up as explainatory comments and/or additional reasons to speedy, and work up Huggle and other tools to make it easy use some common canned note= text, like note=May also qualify for G11, advertising or note=May also qualify for A7 - No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organisations, web content). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:23, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Quite often the subject may actually be notable, and the problem is that the text of the press-release/company website/Myspace profile submitted is unacceptably promotional and POV. In those cases we want not to frighten them off but to break it to them that they are going to have to do some work to make an acceptable article. davidwr's "note" parameter could still be used to provide a message for that case, of course. JohnCD (talk) 21:32, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Maybe we should make a special db-multiple template which you can supply with multiple criteria and it shows all of those in the message, e.g. {{db-multiple|G11|G12}}. Regards SoWhy 21:37, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
What I envisioned is that "canned" note= parameters would be added to Huggle etc. to cover 90% of the most common cases. There are still plenty of cases where a customized note is needed, and plenty of cases where no note is needed at all. By the way, the experimental template User:Davidwr/db-2 (analogous to {{prod2}}) has an optional comment parameter. For example: {{User:Davidwr/db-2|Confirmed copyvio. Additionally, this material is unambiguously promotional and should not be added to Wikipedia, regardless of it's copyright status (CSD G11). ~~~~}} davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:41, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: db-multiple

I proposed above that we create a sort of {{db-multiple}} to do what Beeblebrox has suggested and more. Here is my idea of how it could look like (using {{db-multiple|G11|A7|G12}}):

Someone would just have to dress it up in fancy template coding to make it do what I just created statically but one done it could be a good thing to have, just like {{article issues}}. What do you all think? (and who would be willing to code it?) Regards SoWhy 14:38, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Love it; will not code for the good of the project. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:09, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, good. (I should like the existing copyvio-only version to still be available as an option.) For what it's worth recently I have dealt with the problem by not tagging for copyvio if I can see a reasonable alternative tag (usually promotion). JamesBWatson (talk) 15:29, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
It's probably a good idea to note the copyvio also, just in case the article ever winds up at WP:DRV or the admin reviewing disagrees about the alternate rationale. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:38, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Tim Song's template

Here it is:

{{User:Tim Song/Sandbox|G1=|G2=|G3=|hoax=|G4=|G10=|Attackorg=|G11=|G12=http://example.com|A1=|A2=s:Main Page|A3=|A7=|bio=|web=|corp=|animal=|club=|band=|A9=|A10=|category=|demo=yes}} produces: User:Tim Song/Sandbox Tim Song (talk) 16:53, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

In hopes of keeping this even conceivably usable by the non-huggle-endowed, could the G12-url and A2-source parameters be combined into non-empty values for G12 and A12, that is, {{db-multiple|G1=|...|G11=|G12=http://example.com|A1=|A2=s:Main Page|A3=|...}}? —Korath (Talk) 17:06, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 Fixed though you shouldn't be using more than three or four parameters at the same time anyway... Tim Song (talk) 17:17, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Endorse - let's do it. I'm sure there will be glitches to work out later. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:24, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Looks like a great way to note several strong issues (giving reviewing users multiple options) and relay the most information to creating editors whilst avoiding the bite-y problems we've discussed before associated with multiple db tags. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:03, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Works for me; I've come across things that were multiple SD worthy. Of course one reason is all you need, but still... HalfShadow 19:55, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Could it be coded to allow using{{db-multiple|G1|G3}} instead of {{db-multiple|G1=|G3=}}? Regards SoWhy 20:58, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Unlikely and way harder. That would require using a #switch on each parameter, I think; perhaps someone a bit more template-savvy can think of another method. Named parameters is what {{article issues}} uses, anyway. (If you want easy memorization, |A3=yes has the same effect; as long as the parameter is supplied its value does not matter). Tim Song (talk) 21:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but {{article issues}} has them for the month and year, it makes sense there. I'll drop happy-melon (talk · contribs) a line, he is template-savvy, maybe he can think of something. I think people will keep on forgetting to add the "=" if it has no use. I mean it makes sense for A2, G12 or G4 for example but not for the others. Regards SoWhy 21:19, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Opposed unless Moonriddengirl girl codes.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:12, 21 December 2009 (UTC) (support in spades actually)
Looks like a good idea to me; it'd be helpful not just at WP:SCV but with new-page patrolling in general. Just make sure it can be used by us non-Hugglers, please... A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 06:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Happy-melon's template

Did someone ask for a stupidly complicated template? Your wish is my command :D
{{db-multiple|G1|g3|g2}} Currently only works for G1-3, purely because I'm too lazy to update the other templates necessary. If someone could duplicate this edit to the rest of the templates that they want represented in this stack, and add them to {{db-multiple/item}} - the syntax should be fairly clear. Apologies for the slightly dodgy grammar and punctuation resulting from taking the raw criterion statements out of context, but it means there's one fewer place to update the texts if we want to change them. Please have a play and let me know what you think. Happy‑melon 14:59, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

That's exactly what I thought it should look like. Two things though: 1.) Can it be modified to show a warning if it is used without parameters? 2.) Can your coding handle criteria that need extra information, i.e. {{db-multiple|G12=http://www.copyvio.url/}}? Regards SoWhy 15:21, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
1) yes, easily. 2) not at the moment. Which parameters would need a value? Happy‑melon 16:08, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
I'd say G4 (for the XFD), G12 (for the source of the copyvio) and A2 (for the foreign wiki with the copy, optional though since A2 probably is never used in this template). Regards SoWhy 16:18, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Happy-melon, can you please do something to prevent this talk page from being listed on CAT:CSD, which it is now because your template includes a category link? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:48, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Second. I'd noinclude the cats in the test template, but I don't want to go mucking around with someone else's proposal. Looks like a good proposal, too. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 19:18, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Muck around as much as you want, it's just a test after all. I can't find where it's included from though. Regards SoWhy 20:04, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Fixed, rather inelegantly. It's included from {{db-multiple/item}} which in turn included it from the speedy templates. Tim Song (talk) 20:48, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I tentatively support this, but I'm not quite sure how it would be functional with Twinkle's Radio button selection style, which concerns me seeing as all of my new page patrol is done using TW. Once I know how this would work, it would have my full and complete support. Ks0stm (T•C•G) 19:41, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm sure it can be re-coded to use multiple choice buttons instead. I'll drop Amalthea a note to be sure though. Regards SoWhy 20:04, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, the TW change is definitely doable. Tim Song (talk) 20:48, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Never let the tools stand in the way of improvements. With this case in particular, the worst that could happen is that Twinkle won't support multi-SDs for a while. But as Tim said, it's certainly doable. I won't be able to work on it till next year, and I'm not quite sure yet about the best way to present that option without sacrificing the current simplicity, but there are a number of options, so no worries. And by the by, abusing radio buttons as buttons, like Twinkle likes to do, is a usability nightmare anyhow and can use a change.
    However: I notice the user notification code has been conveniently dropped from all multi-SD template variants above. Happy Melon, while you're at it, could you be so nice and create a sister template {{db-multiple-notice}} that takes the same parameters and outputs a nice user notification à la {{db-g1-notice}} and friends? :D
    Amalthea 00:05, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

checkY I have now added all criteria to {{db-multiple}}, edited all db-xxx templates to allow raw=yes and rephrased those that started with a "." to sound better when used this way. The template is ready to use, although Amalthea is correct that a sister template for notifying users is probably needed. Also, it currently (see above) does not support parameters for those templates that require them (e.g. G12 and A2). My idea would be to use the same parameter names that the templates use themselves (e.g. url= and source=) and db-multiple simply passes them to the relevant templates, e.g. using {{db-multiple|G12|url=http://www.example.org}} invokes {{db-g12|raw=yes|url=http://www.example.org/}} in {{db-multiple/item}}. Should be possible and easier than trying to make G12= to work in those cases. Regards SoWhy 12:24, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that would be the simpler solution. The notification templates aren't based on a meta-template, so no fancy tricks will work there; and building a template that substitutes without leaving a huge mess of parser functions will be tricky if you try and be too clever. Could be tricky. Happy‑melon 13:10, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
Then you (or someone with template skills) just needs to implement it
As for the notification template, we could use something like {{nn-warn-reason}}. I created an example at {{nn-warn-multiple}}. Regards SoWhy 13:50, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
Anyone still interested in this? Regards SoWhy 13:46, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I have now added support for url= on G12 and F9; for rationale= on g6, G7, G8, and T3; and for source= on A2. I have not provided for the 2nd positional parameters which some of the specific templates (such as {{db-a7}} support, but that could be added easily enough if wanted. DES (talk) 20:23, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Length of Time Speedy Delete Should Be Left on Article

It strikes me there should be a minimum requirement on the length of time between when a speedy tag is placed and when the article is actually deleted. I had a speedy applied to one of my articles at 12:05 AM Eastern. In looking at the nominators edit history, there were numerous instances where a speedy was applied and then the article was deleted an hour or two later. This is particularly onerous since many of the speedys were placed in the early morning hours. There should be an "assume good faith period" where the author is allowed time to correct a problem or at least give other editors a chance to look at the article. This should be a minimum of 24 hours or even 48 hours or perhaps even more. Americasroof (talk) 18:45, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd be happy with some sort of pause for speedies of good faith articles. But {{G10}}, {{G3}}, and {{G11}} should still be done ASAP, also {{G7}} and {{U1}} are relatively low priority speedies, but there is no reason to delay them. PS have you tried Wikipedia:Deletion review? ϢereSpielChequers 19:16, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
when it comes to speedy, most sensible admins will usually give a7's and similar a grace period, even if they don't, most of us will usually restore one to your userspace if you ask. Setting any kind of formal time limit is just excessive bureaucracy--Jac16888Talk 19:45, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers, deletion review is not necessary because the article, Zimmer Real Estate Services, was not deleted. Of course, that's not to say that the speedy tagging was appropriate (my opinion is that a {{prod}} or a comment on the article's talk page would have been better in this case). –Black Falcon (talk) 19:50, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. The A7 speedy was applied ONE MINUTE after the article was first posted and before other edits could occur. Hence, my concern that if an editor is quick on the gun there, then should at least be a safety valve. Americasroof (talk) 20:02, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I would not support this, at least not as a blanket requirement for all speedy criteria. A delay is not necessary (or not appropriate) for many of the speedy criteria: G1, G2, G3, G5, G6, G7, G8, G9, G10, G12, and virtually all of the other non-article speedy criteria. I would also like to echo the sentiments expressed by other editors in this related discussion: imposing a time delay is a "quick-fix" only that, as is often the case with such fixes, brings with it as many problems as it fixes. Such a measure does not address and cannot change the mentality of speedy deletion tagging, which unfortunately (and partly by necessity) places too much emphasis on speed and too little on case-by-case evaluation and engagement of creators of problem articles. –Black Falcon (talk) 19:48, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your quick replies. I do agree with the quick deletion of most of the items. It's the A7 (which hit my article), A9 and G11 where are subject to interpretation and which can be corrected which need to be throttled down on speedys. Those incidentally are the articles most likely to hit newbies. Thanks again. Americasroof (talk) 19:56, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I'd be reluctant to introduce "real speedies" and "24-hour speedies". I think we can leave this to the admins involved. Debresser (talk) 18:13, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

If there was a required time period involved, then it would not be a speedy deletion. Speedy deletion exists to ensure that the most obvious cases are quickly dealt with and not placed into a time-delay queue like PROD or AFD when the result would likely be the same either way. Articles should be "ready-to-go" by the time they hit mainspace. That doesn't mean they should be done when you hit "Save" the first time, but rather that the majority of the information that you have in front of you should be written up. (Then further edits reflect additional research, etc.) At the very minimum they need to pass the speedy criteria before being in mainspace; if you're still working on an article-in-progress that hasn't reached the point it passes CSD yet, work it up in your userspace and call a few other editors' attention to it by way of talk-page messages. (Sadly just being in mainspace doesn't attract editors—there's 6,919,264 after all; I've had several that have been in mainspace for years and have only had myself and bots edit them.) If you have other concerns with an article that was speedied, try contacting the deleting admin. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:18, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

There are at least 500-1000 articles deleted every day using CSD, a significant portion of which are A7 deletions (probably ~50%). If we mandate a 24 hour waiting period, we'll end up with CAT:CSD constantly clogged with hundreds of articles, only a small fraction of which would be eligible for deletion. In most cases A7 cannot be "corrected," as the subject is truly not notable at all. At best a spurious assertion of notability can be added to force an AFD. Mr.Z-man 19:59, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure the problem with the A7 tag on Zimmer Real Estate Services is the timing anyway; this [7] is what it looked like when it was tagged (not that different to now). I wouldn't have said that was an A7; I think the scale of the projects listed was enough claim of significance to avoid speedy deletion. Cassandra 73 (talk) 23:07, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Leave it to the admins. Even on a difficult criterion like A7, some articles can plainly be deleted within seconds of tagging ("Johnny X is a soccer player for his local high school and plays the tuba"); others will be more difficult. The speed with which an article is deleted is a matter for admin discretion. If an admin pulls the trigger too quickly and gets it wrong, its likely they'll hear about it. --Mkativerata (talk) 06:26, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree entirely. Whatever unofficial and unwritten guideline each admin uses seems fine 95%+ of the time seem to work just fine. Watching a list and/or going to the CSD page and looking at tagged articles in categories, if I'm around a few hours I can see the whole process for a lot of articles run start to finish. A7s are kind of the default setting... the neighbor noise complaint 911 call of CSDs, as it were. Those in apparent good faith do get noticed often, contrary to popular belief, at some point in the process. The people who work on the admin end of it seem to have it down cold and I'm always impressed at the priority category enforcement used, so why fix what already works and would be a gigantic effort to overhaul for arguably no benefit?
Blah, no, I can't support any set time delay policy for any reason. If a patrol saw something and knows it has a grace they could start an AfD with a SNOW close in mind. Sometimes it'd work, others no. What if this is in the wait period? Is the article immune? This is why CSD exists; an admin is acting in place of a short-length AfD that would have a SNOW close. If I can easily jury-rig AfD into something that is 1) faster, 2) more transparent, and 3) consensus-based instead of a normal CSD on a delay to delete, why bother? Community discussion to admin delete versus more waiting and only the admin delete? I'll take the first method, please. We have counter-CSD patrols to improve or "stub-ify" articles, userification, {{holdon}} {{newpage}} {{construction}}, CSD removal to PROD, PROD to AfD, deletion review, etc etc. All of that exists so that this can just run along on its own. ...Oh, and as always, it's not our responsibility if someone throws out an article for publishing before it meets basic standards... but even so I'd userify plenty if it were permissive for non-admins. At least, it wasn't a month ago and I haven't heard of a change. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 15:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

The tag was left on the article for about 47 minutes. Then it was removed because A7 didn't apply. If that user hadn't removed it someone else would have, perhaps an admin. Just because something has been tagged for speedy deletion doesn't mean it will be deleted under the speedy deletion criteria. If people just let them sit because an arbitrary time limit hasn't expired yet, it would just hold up the process, making it a pain to find valid speedy deletion deletion candidates and and to remove the tag from invalid speedy deletion candidates. In that situation the tag may have stayed on the article for much longer before being removed. If something's not a speedy deletion candidate it shouldn't be tagged for speedy deletion. An arbitrary waiting period before deletion wouldn't change that. Such pages should either be kept or go through PROD or AFD instead. Reach Out to the Truth 15:51, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Criterion for dangerous images?

Could we expand criterion F2 to include images that contain potentially malicious code? I admit that I don't know how the software determines whether an image is dangerous, but apparently at least Commons is set up to do this — Commons image File:Great Moravia not cropped, eng labels.svg contains an automated message reading "Warning: This file may contain malicious code, by executing it your system may be compromised." If I'm missing something on the technical side, please tell me that and accept my apology for taking your time. Nyttend (talk) 03:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

G3 could cover it if it was malicious and bad faith was involved, and G6 if it was bad but no bad faith involved. Otherwise IAR and get rid of dangerous items please. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:41, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Add new criteria to CSD

In light of a related ArbCOM motion, a Request for Comment has been opened on this subject. Rather than having discussions in ten different places, please direct comments to: Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 22:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.


Copied over from discussion at AN/I

How does everyone feel about a new CSD# for BLPs that are totally unsourced for more than a year? <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 07:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd go for 2 months, myself. If someone's making an article, they should (hopefully) have - or know where to acquire - sources already. A year just seems to long to me. - Tainted Conformity SCREAM 07:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
For reference, this has been discussed previously: WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/blp. Amalthea 13:22, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • This discussion should be at WT:CSD, but yes, I would entirely support a CSD for all BLPs that are tagged as unsourced for a time on the order of months.  Sandstein  07:28, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I think this would work after we largely clean up the current mess. We obviously can't just dump tens of thousands of articles into the current CSD queue, so we'd have to proceed slowly in cleaning up the 51,000 unreferenced we have now. I think using the PROD solution above would work better for that and would not put a bunch of extra weight on CSD which is already always backlogged but important for other reasons (copyvios, attack pages, etc.). Once we've cleaned out most of the existing unreferenced BLPs I'd fully support creating a CSD category for BLPs unreferenced for X months. However I could be missing something in my thinking here, and if others prefer this to the above solution I'd certainly be fine with that. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 07:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • If this achieves consensus at WT:BLP (as it should) then it will allow us to fast-track removal of these articles, so yes it's a good idea and will help with what Bigtimepeace calls "the current mess". Guy (Help!) 07:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • This is a double-edged sword. It's productive in theory, so I want to support it in that way. We could delete stuff, but it would have the possibility of alienating editors who are newbies or don't edit much. Ah, a tough decision at almost three in the morning. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 07:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm a bit against this. I think the proposal at WT:PROD is better, and if that's what's agreed-upon, this CSD would be mostly irrelevant. If it's been unreferenced for an entire year, what's one more week of waiting, really? This borders on instruction creep if the PROD change is implemented. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 08:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Support, but only if the PROD suggestion doesn't come to fruition. - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) talk 08:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Second choice. A prod with some teeth (no easy reversal without improvements) is a much better and friendlier option. Only if that compromise cannot be achieved should this drastic action be considered. Fram (talk) 08:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose There is far too much chance that this will lead to deletion of many perfectly valid articles that could be referenced if anyone tried. Looking at a few of the articels deleted out-of-process in the incident that sstarted this, I had no trouble addign sources to 3 out of 4, and i'm confident that print sources exist for the 4th. Remember that unsourced contentious BLPs are alredy deletable, so we are talking exclusively about uncontentious content here. DES (talk) 09:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose - too many babies would be chucked out along with the bathwater. The PROD proposal is much more reasonable, and allows for transparency and for the articles to be sourced before being deleted. Many, many of the articles in question can be easily sourced with a cursory Google search. The WordsmithCommunicate 09:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I have a number of objections to this. The mere fact that an article is unsourced does not mean it should be deleted, particularly if it can be easily demonstrated that sources exist. Deletion is a last resort and only occurs for articles that have fundamental, severe problems that would either prevent a compliant article from being written or would require the article to be completely rewritten from scratch. Lack of citations is not one of these problems.
  • There are plenty of unsourced BLPs that are perfectly encyclopedic. Take a look at Hazel Byford, Baroness Byford. The subject is a peer and a current member of the House of Lords, and if I took the article to AfD I would be laughed at since there are clearly plenty of references available. Yet it was totally unsourced for a lot longer than a year. Hut 8.5 09:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This is a poor solution to the BLP problem, which would likely only serve to degrade the encyclopedia without solving any of the fundamental problems with libelous content. Requiring referencing does absolutely nothing to solve drive-by vandalism, and more insidious cases where someone is determined to attack someone is only marginally more difficult (<ref>..some obscure book or magazine</ref>). G10 already exists and is sufficient. We should develop other solutions to the BLP problem, such as better technical tools for monitoring large number of articles. henrik•talk 10:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Strongest possible Oppose - Being unsourced is a problem that can be solved by simple editing, and therefore it is against deletion policy. A CSD, even more disruptively than PROD, does not help addressing WP:BEFORE, does not help looking for sources, and most importantly doesn't work through community discussion and consensus. Finally, being unreferenced does not automatically implies at all being harmful, libelous or in any way dangerous to the subject or the encyclopedia, and deletion of such articles does little, if anything, in preventing vandalism and libel on BLP articles. A neutral unsourced BLP is much better than a BLP ripe of biased and libelous sources. General semiprotection of all BLPs (sourced or not) would be a much better idea. --Cyclopiatalk 10:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose - the proposal at WT:PROD is a better solution. JohnCD (talk) 11:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose for two main reasons: 1), BLP is about not doing harm, if harm is being done, systems exist to remove content or the whole thing. 2) this is definitely not a discussion for here (or ANI where it started), this would need to be far wider community consensus, because the implications are potentially enormous. GedUK  11:29, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose There is no reason to be speedy after one year. This will remove useful content from the encyclopedia, degrading its use. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose The previous reasons at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/blp are still valid. So far no one has provided any convincing argument why this cannot be handled by WP:PROD - which was created to handle just that and which requires people to consider alternatives to deletion, such as trying to fix it. CSD was not created to deal with such articles and it should not be changed to do it. And as I have pointed out in the previous discussion in April 2009, many of those articles could be fixed easily in almost the same time it would take to review and delete them, so the need for a speedy criterion does not only not exist, it would also increase the risk that hundreds and thousands of valid articles are deleted because some admin is too lazy to do a quick GNews check. Speedy deletion, as Cyclopia points out, is not meant to fix problems that can be fixed by editing. Regards SoWhy 13:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • User:DASHBot is doing interesting work informing various authors of unsourced BLPs that they have created, and has only been live for a fortnight. I think we should wait a couple of weeks to see what effect that has on Category:All unreferenced BLPs. As for new BLPs I would support "delete new unsourced BLP" as a speedy criteria, provided we very clearly informed article creators that from a particular date this was the new rule. I think this would stop the problem growing and then there is just a mammoth maintenance task to improve or delete the crud. Then of course we have to work on the poorly sourced bios - from what I can see a lot of the unreferenced BLPs are really under referenced ones. ϢereSpielChequers 13:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose. There is a problem, but a deletion spree is not the answer. Hesperian 15:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose This is against Wikipedia policy. As long as articles don't contain information that is otherwise problematic there is no criterion for deletion of unchallenged information. This goes for BLPs as well. Debresser (talk) 15:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose too broad and too likely to get rid of articles that should be saved rather than deleted.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 15:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • The vast majority of unsourced BLPs are probably just stubs that nobody's included references in (for whatever reason, laziness, lack of knowledge about the need for references, no information like birthdates that would require a cite, etc.) Deleting all unsourced BLPs would get rid of a lot of contentious content, yes, but would also delete many of these stubs. Oppose the proposal. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 16:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The bot that is notifying editors of unsourced BLPs is a good move, and I belive will result in a considerable number of article being improved by the addition of references. The emphasis should be on strongly encouraging editors to add sources rather than deleting articles that can be fixed.--Michig (talk) 18:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose Too indiscrimate and does nothing to address the real BLP issues. Colonel Warden (talk) 19:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Support due to the sheer number of unreferenced BLPs and the potential for damage they cause. The bot will notify people of the articles' unreferenced status, the criterion should be "unreferenced and tagged as such for a minimum of one month" or some other suitable period. The alternative, of course, would be to remove all material which is not sourced and mark them as A7... In effect this would be the same as adding a special BLP-PROD to unreferenced bios instead of {{unreferenced}}, but with a longer expiry time. We could handle contested deletions by restoring any article for which the requester can provide two non-trivial reliable independent sources (with PROD we don't require that, of course - it would be just as easy to amend PROD so that BLPs don't get the usual default restore unless sources are cited, of course - either would have the same beneficial effect). Guy (Help!) 19:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
    What "potential for damage" is there in an unsourced BLP that isn't equally present in a minimally sourced and rarely visited BLP? I am just not seeing the problem this solves. And your proposal is not really a form of speedy delete at all, but really a version of the PROD proposal now under discussion at WT:PROD, in my view. DES (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
    And unsourced/poorly sourced article <> a bad article or incorrect article---it just means nobody added sources to the article. If the article is an attack page or has critical information, then of course it is eligible under already existing criteria. If the article is on a non-notable individuals, there are already procedures in place for that. The fact that this is for a BLP, does not mean that we completely short circuit the process.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 20:41, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • CSD is not the proper venue for addressing sourcing issues, unsourced BLPs can be deleted by PROD or AFD already, negative unsourced BLPs already fall into the realm of attack pages. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:43, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose. CSD should not be used to delete valid articles lacking references. If there are BLP issues, those need to be aired and not simply be speedy deleted. If something is not sourced in a year, is it really likely to have a blp issue? What harm is being done by keeping these and allowing PROD or AFD nominations? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose - on general principles, and also because this seems to be an effort to legitimize an out-of-process mass deletion. Older unedited articles (of which there are many) need special care because the author may be long gone, or inattentive to the project. The goal of being here is to improve the encyclopedia, not to attack it with a machete. Improvement comes by intelligently reviewing articles, adding sources where there are sources to be found, speedily deleting obvious BLP vios, and nominating the debatable / marginal cases for deletion under normal process. - Wikidemon (talk) 23:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Support we need to be able to address BLP quickly, but there is a need for a grandfather clause so as to prevent an initial mass deletion. Gnangarra 00:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
    "Need to address BLP quickly" means what? An article exists, it doesn't have a source? Is it an attack page? Is it liable? If not, then so what? If it is erroneous, then it needs to be cleaned up or trimmed down. Wholesale deletions is not the way to go.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 00:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose. There is indeed a problem and a mass deletion isn't going to solve it. -FASTILY (TALK) 01:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Strong Support — we're at the tipping point on this one; all 50,000+ have to go in short order; some w/mop and inclination can restore a few they can source. Jack Merridew 02:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Strong support - When there aren't tens of thousands of worthless sub-stub BLPs that can and will never be expanded, and when there are not thousands of BLPs that have sat unsourced for months and years, then it's a reasonable argument to say some good articles might get tossed with the bad. At this point, however, they're needles in a rotting haystack. Lara 02:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • And again, I'll ask what harm does it do to have unsourced BLP's? If it is an attack page, it can already be deleted via A10. If the article fails to make a claim to significance, it can be deleted via A7. Between these two criteria, I suspect that we have covered the vast majority of the articles you are talking about. Being unsourced and a BLP does not equate to being a bad poorly written article that needs to be deleted. The only purpose passing this proposal would serve would be to sanction wholesale deletions via automated tools without actually assessing the articles in question---which would be in counter to the criteria required for CSD---not controversial. Part of the problem is that with this wholesale approach, there are undoubtly some very well written, neutral, informative articles that would get caught up in the mess---articles that need sources/cleaned up bit, but are not the intent of this proposal. This proposal will have unintended consequences.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 02:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose Mass out-of-process deletion is throwing out the baby, the mom, and the towel along with the bathwater. If we're going to become a "delete first and ask questions later" site, then we effectively abandon the core principle of "anyone can edit," replacing it with "anybody can edit who has a good a priori grasp of WP:BLP, WP:V, WP:BIO, WP:RS, and our footnoting scheme." You're effectively locking new editors out of BLPs, which is a very large editing area. The current policy is sensible, but some of the interpretations that abound show an alarming lack of appreciation for the rough-and-tumble, give-and-take, incremental improvement-style that has made the Internet at large and Wikipedia in specific such a valued resource. RayTalk 02:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Support - We can userify any that someone is actually willing to work on. If they are fixed between the tag and the time of deletion, they can stay pending further review. If anything, a year is too long though. This criteria isn't really NEEDED though, policy already allows for such deletion. ++Lar: t/c 02:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'm not seeing why prod and AfD can't deal with the problem. Nor do I believe the problem is as severe as others seem to. Hobit (talk) 03:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose per User:Cyclopia and User:Henrik. Formally having some references listed is by no means a guarantee of WP:V or WP:NPOV, and neither is the lack thereof a guarantee of a an article failing our principles, especially for articles created years ago. The unsourced negative ones can be speedily deleted as User:Beeblebrox already pointed out. Pcap ping 05:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose There is a problem, but this is a sledgehammer solution. --Mkativerata (talk) 05:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose If the article contains contentious material, that can be removed per WP:BLP. If it contains negative material, it can be CSD'd as an attack page. All this would mean is that unsourced articles submitted by newbies will be deleted out of hand, while the 'lazy' editors will add a vague source to try to prevent it falling under the category of "unsourced" - I'm guessing that the admins who can't be bothered to do a quick look on Google for a source for an unsourced article won't be bothered to check the sources given in an article! (see Layton, Nora (15 September 2008). "Laziness in the Workplace". Daily Sun. Naspers. Retrieved 21 January 2010.) -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 10:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Support, with the provision that any article deleted under this criteria can be userified upon request (unless there's other problems, such as personal attacks, copyvio, etc). Lankiveil (speak to me) 11:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs

Because one of the main criticisms of all suggested ProD deletions of unsourced BLPs was that people are misusing this system to achieve their goals, I have created a proposal for a completely new (although obviously similar) system: Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs. ProD statys like it is, and all discussion, refinements, opposition, ... can be centered at the new location. No confusion between regular Prod and the new system will be possible anymore, I hope. Again, this is a proposal, not a new policy. I'll post notifications of it in a few central locations, feel free to add it to all relevant pages I may have forgotten. Fram (talk) 09:52, 21 January 2010 (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 criterion to C2

There's a proposal on adding a new speedy rename criterion for categories at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion. Feel free to comment. Jafeluv (talk) 08:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

G11 is problematic

WP:G11 instructs admins to speedy-delete a page that is 'exclusively promotional, and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic'. However, in some cases - pretty often, I would imagine - articles are created which are unambiguously advertising, but are nonetheless on notable subjects. In such cases, policy points us in two different directions: per G11 the article should be deleted, but per WP:N it should be kept. Obviously, what should happen in such cases is that the article should be rewritten from a less promotional point of view; but in that case, why delete it? If the subject of an article is notable, even if the article is promotional, what purpose does deleting it serve?

Lack of neutrality is explicitly not a criterion for deleting an article at AFD; it should not be for CSD either. If the subject of an article is not notable, it should be deleted under A7 (for obvious cases) or taken to PROD or AFD (for less clear ones); if it is notable but written in a promotional tone, it should be kept and tagged for cleanup instead. I don't think G11 should be a speedy-deletion criterion at all.

(And yes, before you ask, this was inspired by a current AFD - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Recommind, which is discussing precisely these issues. I hope this doesn't count as canvassing; it's not intended as such.) Robofish (talk) 02:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Deleting it discourages future contributions of a similar sort. Certainly, if a volunteer fixes the article in short order, there's no need to delete it, but absent a volunteer willing to do so, it's best if the article just goes away. WP:N is not policy, so it is clearly overridden by WP:CSD. Powers T 03:05, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
The basic logic behind G11 is that if 0% of the content is usable for writing a proper, non-spam, encyclopedic article, there's no point keeping said content around. If removing any amount of the content of the article would fix the problem, or if any of the content is salvageable, the article would not qualify for G11. That is to say that an article containing only "ALL YOU GUYS SHOULD BUY <THING>" should be deleted, while one containing "<COMPANY> IS A COMPANY WHICH MAKES <THING> YOU SHOULD ALL BUY <THING>" should be edited to remove the spam, but keep the base statements of fact (though I do note that after such a removal an article might qualify for another criterion, but that is neither here nor there). Cheers. lifebaka++ 03:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Similar to the above comment, the key words in G11 are exclusively promotional. That's a tough bar to cross. Recommind does not cross it. If the G11 bar is crossed, the article should be killed on sight because wikipedia is not an advertising platform. If the business concerned is notable, a properly sourced and neutral article can be created in userspace and the page can be undeleted. --Mkativerata (talk) 03:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
"Exclusively promotional" is a high bar, but one that is met all too often by new articles. In general, ads masquerading as articles should be sent to WP:PROD or WP:AfD if the advertising is not unambiguous. However, that doesn't mean that G11 should always be applied so rigidly. If a page is mostly – but not exclusively – promotional, it violates the spirit of the CSD policy and may be speedily deleted. This slightly more liberal application of the criterion is a good thing because it sends a message to those who create spam-type articles: Such pages do not belong on Wikipedia. And if the subject is notable, it's probably better to speedily delete under G11 and start from scratch, scrubbing the promotion out of the page history. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 22:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
My own strategy is only to delete the worst G11s, to reduce the size of the pile so that people who want to argue one way or the other about G11 can afford to take some time to discuss the judgment calls. Still ... the worst of the lot keeps me pretty busy. If the promotional material ("spam" means something repeated ad nauseum, and I'm generally just dealing with one page, so if I'm tagging, I use db-promo rather than db-spam) is on a user's main userpage, and their name itself promotes the product or campaign, and any reasonable person reading the page would come to the conclusion that the point of the page is to sell a product or solicit a donation or get you to join their movement, and if there's nothing in their contribs to suggest they're listening to anyone on Wikipedia, and if the page doesn't have any "interesting" content (hard to define, but I know it when I see it), then I've never seen support for keeping that page (and we can't use A7 in userspace, of course). I've also never seen support before for the idea (expressed above) to keep the sentence that says "<COMPANY> IS A COMPANY WHICH MAKES <THING>", and edit out the sentence that says "YOU SHOULD ALL BUY <THING>", at least not in userspace, where the user's name itself is promotional, the aim of the page is clear, and they haven't moved anything to mainspace ... if anyone notices consensus changing on this, please let me know, because I delete pages like this by the handful. - Dank (push to talk) 14:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC) added two phrases 14:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

(redent) My view has ever been that spam should be deleted without regard to notability, and that any article that reads like it was written by a PR department is spam. Moreover, notability guidelines need to be interpreted very strictly when commercial businesses and products are concerned, and are nowhere strict enough. Businesses have entire departments that exist for the purposes of calling attention to themselves. We really only need to have articles on household names and brands, and firms with established physical presences; any others, and the project will easily approach completeness without them. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

While some may consider G11 problematic, I'm not sure it is something we can do something about, since it was added by a staff member of the WMF and the recent resolution states:
Many people create articles that are overly promotional in tone: about themselves, people they admire, or those they are paid to represent. These are not neutral, and have no place in our projects. Generally, the Wikimedia community protects the projects well against this common problem by deleting or improving hagiographies.
So, while I also support G11 on a subjective level of being good for the project, I also think it is one of those things that we aren't necessarily able to change. MBisanz talk 15:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem, imho, is not with G11 itself but with its application. Remember, G11 sets the bar at "unambiguously promotional", it requires a page that per definition consists only of material that is of no use to the project because it's pure spam. Some admins interpret G11 to apply to all articles that are written from a non-neutral point of view but it's not meant that way. One admin once said: "If you remove all spammy content from a page and you end up with any valid content at all, it's not a G11". The point of G11 is not one of WP:N, it's one of WP:NPOV. Per WP:NPOV, all content that is not neutral but only represents a certain point of view should be removed or rewritten. G11 handles those cases where everything could be validly removed per WP:NPOV and where you, if you did so, would be left with an empty page. Regards SoWhy 17:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

While we're on the subject, I bring this up every 6 months or so: I don't use the drop-down deletion summary for G11, mine is "G11. Please see WP:WHYNOT" (a section in the Business FAQ). I prefer that because WHYNOT is very short and to the point, and the users I'm dealing with have very short attention spans ... it's rare for them to show any signs that they're reading anything at all. Also, very few people think that what they're doing is inappropriate, so a deletion summary that implies that they're doing something terrible is not likely to get them to read further. I used to catch flak from a few of the patrollers that I wasn't being hard-assed enough, but they're all on board now. The hard-core spammers aren't reading anything we're writing anyway, so being nice doesn't cause any problems, because they almost never show up again after we take out their trash. - Dank (push to talk) 20:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I do not think I am an extreme deletionist, but I have always interpreted "entirely promotional" as "essentially promotional", in the sense that the amount of suitable material after basic editing is not enough to be a satisfactory article.Much material can equally be considered promotional or descriptive it is often possible to orient the article properly, but it can take an inordinate amount of work. I will sometimes rewrite if the importance is clear enough that it will be worth the trouble, and the rewriting not too complicated. But otherwise, I do delete on this reason fairly often. Anyone is welcome to check my G11 deletions for reasonableness.
But I totally disagree with the view that "We really only need to have articles on household names and brands, and firms with established physical presences; any others, and the project will easily approach completeness without them." I see no reason why physical rather than web presence is necessary, or that household familiarity (which amounts to 'famous') is the criterion for inclusion. notability is properly defined as much broader than that. We should have articles on as many things as are important and have sources, and for which proper articles can be written.
I also disagree that Danny made that edit in any other capacity than as an editor. He was properly removing a removal of it done without any apparent consensus. (and in any case it was back in 2006.). The only places where the wmf has mandated policy is copyright and libel, and some aspects of BLP. Not spam. Removing spam is our own policy as a community, and a very important one that I would not like to compromise.
Dank is correct that most of the our deletion summaries need to avoid bite, but they also have to be clear about the reason. DGG ( talk ) 22:38, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Possible attack pages

Towaru (talk · contribs) has a lot of sub-pages containing a link to the Srebrenica Genocide blogspot, which is maintained by banned Bosniak (talk · contribs) and is used to attack Wikipedia. Per this ANI discussion I do not wish to add another link to that blogspot on Wikipedia. Anyway, do the user subpages fall under the "attack pages" criteria and thus qualify for speedy deletion, or are they speedyable under another criteria; failing that, do they need to go to WP:MFD?

Pages in question are:-

The link is also on that editor's talk page. That editor's contributions may also be worthy of further scrutiny, as may their other subpages. Mjroots (talk) 08:50, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I think {{db-spam}} also applies to these pages; all of them are used for linkspam, as evinced by their titles, "Google Spot Me". Cunard (talk) 08:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
That was handy, templated the head page and they all got tagged! Mjroots (talk) 09:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
Well, the reason they all got tagged is that the sub-subpages all transclude User:Towaru/Google Spot Me. :) Cunard (talk) 09:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
Although in light of this [8] I think we can feel free to delete any leftover pages in his userspace. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:57, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

CSD F8 backlog

The content of Category:Wikipedia files with the same name on Wikimedia Commons grew to ~12,000 files in a few days. How do we deal with this? WP:AWB apparently can't batch delete files. WP:TW can, but its default is 5,000 and the doc recommends not to change this value. I doubt manual deletion is a viable option. Comments? Materialscientist (talk) 03:05, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

F9 vs. F4

A small disagreement between myself and User:Fastily pointed to a strange gap of coverage in between criteria F9 ("blatant copyvio", immediate deletion) and F4 ("missing info", deletion after waiting period).

  • F9 says: images "that are claimed by the uploader to be images with free licenses when this is obviously not the case."
  • F4 says: "files that lack the necessary licensing information"
  • The problem arose with images where the uploader provided no source/licensing information at all, but a later image patroller identified the source and clearly identified the file as copyvio (in the cases under discussion, from Getty Images.)
  • Fastily insists that F9, on its literal reading, should only be invoked if we know the image is unacceptable but the uploader has made an explicit (false) claim to the contrary.
  • I am of the opinion that F4 should only be invoked where information is objectively missing, no matter who provided or failed to provide that information.
  • My position is that what the uploader claims or doesn't claim is not particularly relevant; relevant is what we objectively know about the image. Since uploaders don't "OWN" their image descriptions, it doesn't matter who made or failed to make any given claim. Once we know that an image is from a non-free source, and no plausible claim has been made why it's nevertheless acceptable, it should go immediately.
  • The paraphrase of F9 that is contained in the {{db-imagevio}} tag makes much more sense: it speaks of images that are"copied from [...] and there is no credible assertion that [...]" (i.e. that it has an acceptable status). The point is that there is "no credible assertion", not that there is an assertion but it's wrong.

I propose to modify the wording of F9 to bring it in line with what I think has always been its intended spirit and its application in practice, similar to the wording in the template:

  • instead of: "Images (or other media files) that are claimed by the uploader to be images with free licenses when this is obviously not the case."
  • change to: "Images (or other media files) that are obviously from a non-free source, have not been claimed as fair use, and there has been no plausible assertion that they are freely licensed or public domain"

Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I predict that "obviously from a non-free source" will led to some editors tagging images with no known source on the grounds that what ever the source is it must "obviously" be non-free. Therefore I propose modified wording: "Images (or other media files) that are unquestionably from a specifically identified non-free source, have not been claimed as fair use, and there has been no plausible assertion that they are freely licensed or in the public domain; and also Images (or other media files) where the source is not known but is probably non-free, and where the uploader has claimed a free license that is obviously not applicable."
The second clause is because I think that we also want to deal with the case of a false license, apparently applied in an effort to conceal the non-free status, on an image of otherwise unknown source. Or perhaps we should leave the current F9 unchanged to cover that case, and add a new criterion "Images (or other media files) that are unquestionably from a specifically identified non-free source, have not been claimed as fair use, and there has been no plausible assertion that they are freely licensed or in the public domain.". That would keep separate (albeit related) criteria separate. DES (talk) 16:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Agree with both alternative suggestions above and the principle behind the original suggestion. F9 should cover obvious cases of copyvio where the uploader hasn't named a source. For example, if a photo of a politician is taken from a non-US Parliamentary website, we will know that it is non-free and F9 should apply. In such cases, the lack of source information should be treated as speedily as had the source been provided but without licensing information. --Mkativerata (talk) 18:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
If it is "taken from a non-US Parliamentary website" then we know the source (whether the uplaooder or someone else provided this info). But if the source is not known then more delay is IMO warranted. You seemed to imply, above that "lack of source information" was grounds for immediate deletion. Or did you only mean that if the source was found but had not been provided by the uploader, and was obviously non-free, that was evidence of bad faith leading to a speedy, like an inaccurate license? That i could perhaps support. DES (talk) 19:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Your first intepretation of my comment is not what I meant to imply - sorry if my comment above appears to suggest that I did. If an uploader (a) hasn't named a source (or perhaps also identified the image as self-made); and (b) the file is clearly not free (eg because we know it is from a non-free source), there should be a speedy deletion ground available. I've been tagging these kinds of images as F9 lately (and they've been deleted under F9), but it would be good if F9 could be amended (or a new criterion) added to bolster the case for these speedies. --Mkativerata (talk) 01:22, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Comment. The discussion between myself and Future Perfect at Sunrise may be found here. -FASTILY (TALK) 01:07, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
I support DES's new wording. The images with no know source can at least wait the week's grace from the di-no-source template to give people a change to find the source. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:46, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
If the source is not known then F9 should not apply; {{subst:nsd}} or {{PUF}} would be the appropriate paths. Stifle (talk) 16:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

A7

Looks like we get get rid of A7 altogether. Since Arbcom has declared that all BLPs without reliable sources can be deleted on sight [9] and we define notability as having reliable sources, A7 has just become obsolete. -Chunky Rice (talk) 18:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, ArbCom just overrode a 2/3 vote above opposing a new speedy deletion criterion for AfD. Fences&Windows 19:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
ArbCom does not set policy, the community does, and the discussion above indicates a fairly strong consensus against making "unsourced BLP" a CSD. Hut 8.5 19:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Insofar as A7 has anything to do with notability, which it doesn't at all. And insofar as BLP covers organizations and web content, which it doesn't. And, of course, insofar as that motion actually says that we must delete them, which they haven't. So, no, A7 is far from obsolete. Cheers. lifebaka++ 23:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

It's more like the community overrode arbcom. Pcap ping 21:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I would try to avoid putting it so starkly. Arbcom made a motion to deal with the immediate situation; whatever on may think of it, it did prevent wheel-warring. the motion contained one of two clauses which I think were extremely ill-considered, and can be seen as tending towards promulgating a new speedy criteria, of unsourced BLP. But they did not quite say that, and suggested an RfC, which has been started and is the place for all concerned should express their views; at the moment it is tending towards an accelerated prod procedure. It is not tending towards the adoption of a new speedy criterion--a suggestion to that effect was made , but the community fairly clearly does not have consensus for it. But even if it did, there would still be sourced items that nonetheless do not assert anything approaching notability, and we'd still need db-person to deal with them. What we should do here now is continue our usual practices. The actions were taken in an atmosphere of what I call BLP panic, and we should not contribute further to it.
But it would certainly behoove all of us who patrol here and de-speedy to make certain we advise all authors to make absolutely certain they have decent references. I do not rely on the template for that. I leave a personal message. Some people simply remove the speedy tag and rely on the edit summary, but I do not think that good practice with unsourced articles. DGG ( talk ) 00:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Is there a functional link to the ArbCom motion in question? Powers T 15:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

  • ...which does not, and cannot, create a new de facto criterion for speedy deletion. Just as it is not ArbCom's place to settle good-faith content disputes, it is not ArbCom's place to make policy. Only community consensus can do either. Chunky Rice, that motion nonwithstanding, A7 is alive and kickin'. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 22:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Just a question; can A7 be used to speedy-delete articles about creative works, such as anime? It appears that Miracle Train was deleted using A7 criteria, but I don't see anything in A7 that would cover anime, so I'm a little confused how this worked out... Thanks, Joren (talk) 17:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

A7 only covers the specific things it lists. Creative works aren't covered. However, I wouldn't consider it worth anyone's while to restore that content, so let's call it a WP:IAR speedy. Feel free to recreate the article. Cheers. lifebaka++ 22:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply! Actually I doubt I have the sustained interest or the stamina to write such an anime article :), let alone sourcing it and giving evidence of notability; I'd seen it as a red link and clicked through. If I notice it being created though I'll try to help it make the grade. Thanks! Joren (talk) 04:12, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: Let products fit into A7

I have encountered a few articles (of which most were very short) that describe a product, but did not assert its notability. They simply introduced/described the product, and does not sound explicitly promotional, so they do not fit into G11. However, if I interpret A7 correct, its purpose is to prevent those people/things who/which do not deserve an WP article from having one, and/or preventing them from actually achieving more fame through WP. So, the same could be applied to products - imagine a company invented a new product and had an employee write an WP article describing the characteristics of it. Even if they are not promotional in tone, they are promotional in effect - thus should be prevented. Requiring them to assert notability would at least make this standard a little bit higher - and if the claim of notability is obviously incredible/false, they can be deleted under G11. Further, if a product truly deserve an WP article, the author should at least be able to make a credible claim that it is, so I don't see how this will cause overkill.

Therefore, I propose that products be included into A7, so that if articles about products fail to assert notability, they are to be speedied. Blodance the Seeker 02:43, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

That seems wise. Stifle (talk) 16:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Disagree. Most folks do not know the magic words "This is notable" when they write a new article. It is not really that hard to do an NYT search or the like before excision. Collect (talk) 16:41, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Very valid concern - but if we agree on this then the entire A7 is to be abolished because it already has the potential of biting, products included or not. Regards, Blodance the Seeker 17:25, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Disagree as well. This has been proposed multiple times in the past and was rejected (imho correctly) every time. Unlike companies, products can be notable without being able to indicate importance or significance, if they are very new or target only a very special market. Also, products is not a clear phrase: Is software a product? Movies? Books? One can reasonable assume that they are but for all those things it was rejected countless times in the past. Last but not least, products don't really appear as new pages that often - far less than companies or real persons. So including products into A7 would fail the requirements #1 and #3 on the top of this page. See also prior discussions on... software, products, products (with further links to prior discussions), software and the simplify RFC. Regards SoWhy 17:02, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
  • But if products are a)new and no significant coverage, then it is by definition not notable - at least too early for a WP article; b)targeted to a very special market, then they must be special and/or serving special purposes, and we can reasonably expect the author to mention it in the article, so if it is not described as such, we can reasonably assume that they target the general market, thus if they lack claims of notability, they can still be speedied. I know "product" is a bit vague - this can be discussed further to make it specific, for example, I did not mean to target softwares, as the vast majority of them are online and easier to verify. But I really feel it neccessary to add products(or some thing more specific, that is) to A7, imho. I understand the WP:BITE concern - but this is common for all CSDs. Also, I did check previous proposals, but I think the fact that it has been proposed multiple times in the past can also mean that a part of the community agree with this opinion, and consensus can change, so I decided to propose this again. Regards, Blodance the Seeker 17:18, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
    Nothing in A7 talks about newness, significant coverage, or target market specificity. A7 requires an indication of importance or significance—that is, some claim that reasonably implies that coverage exists if it were to be actively looked for. For the narrow range of topics that can be speedy deleted per A7—real people, animals, organizations, and web content—the sort of things that result in secondary coverage are fairly well understood. For such a vague and broad topic as "products", or even many very specific and well-defined subtopics (software's a good example here), the distribution of coverage is unpredictable even to those with specialized knowledge, let alone to Joe Random Admin seeing a {{db-product}}-tagged article in CAT:CSD and trying to make a call in thirty seconds. —Korath (Talk) 18:23, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Thank you Korath for putting it this eloquently. Also, A7 is already a breach of what CSD stands for, as it requires an admin deciding whether to delete. As such, it needs to be limited to those cases where it can be defined strictly and where such articles are added in such quantities that AFD/PROD cannot deal with it. As Korath says, "product" is a "fuzzy" topic, far too fuzzy to be made into a valid criterion. And: I have been an active admin patrolling new pages at the beginning of my adminship and I patrol CAT:SD whenever I find the time to and I don't think such articles appear often enough to warrant a change to A7. Regards SoWhy 19:18, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
From what I can tell, CSD mean to: (as this discussion is about A7, I'm not talking about other things such as r/ds.)
  • Reduce unnecessary time spent on entirely uncontroversial/housekeeping deletions (and reduce the workload of PRODs/AfDs), e.g. G1-G8, A1-A5, A10, vice versa.
  • Quickly eradicate delete those articles that do not belong to Wikipedia, and should not be allowed to survive for the duration of a full PROD/AfD process, such as G9-G12, especially true for attack pages.
IMHO, A7 falls into the second category - some articles that could have been deleted under (borderline) A7 was taken to AfD instead, and turned out to be notable, just written by a new editor and of very poor quality. So the purpose of A7 is to prevent those non-notable (did not even try to assert notability, that is) people/orgs to achieve more fame than they deserve, through Wikipedia. Somewhat like G11, but like I said - unlike G11, they are not that grossly promotional in tone, but they are promotional in effect, and WP is not a directory/Facebook, just like it is not a webhost for ads. And as I stated, if it is a product targeted at a very special market, we could reasonably expect the author to mention it, so the deciding admin could see it anyway. Incidentally, I've seen mobs of SPAs at AfD - sometimes leading to the AfD being relisted and the article actually survives longer. I believe every policy should serve the purpose of improving Wikipedia, and this can discourage some from using Wikipedia for promotional purposes - and after all, if the articles are truly valuable, the author (or editors to whom they asked for help, in case they are new editors) can always ask for an undeletion if they have a good reason. Blodance the Seeker 02:38, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
First of all, A7 uses a lower standard than notability. Please do not confuse it with WP:N, not even asserting it. Any claim of importance or significance is enough. Then, A7 was not created to remove anything that would not be kept at an XFD but only to remove those very common articles which XFD would not be able to handle if they were all tagged for deletion. But since it's a crass exception to our fundamental policy, i.e. that decisions are made by consensus and not by administrative discretion, it needs to be confined to those very few cases. You have not yet explained why such a change is necessary (not just desirable - really necessary!) in order to fix a certain problem you perceive. There is no flood of product articles in the new page log nor is there a way to define "product" strictly enough for A7. If the article are meant to promote the product visibly, G11 covers it. For the rest, PROD and AFD can take care of it just fine. Regards SoWhy 19:27, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Extremely dangerous because no one or two editors or admins can really tell by themselves. About one-third the possible articles that might fall into this category and go to AfD get kept. This is one of the things that requires exposure to the community , as the evidence to show notability may not be obvious. A7 is properly limited to the things any careful person can quickly judge and be almost always right, even not in their field. DGG ( talk ) 19:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose Too difficult a judgement to make for products. People, web content, bands, etc can often be easily tagged and deleted under A7. But I can't think of too many scenarios where a product would clearly fall into the category of "no credible claim to notability". The number of these cases would be quite low, so we lose nothing by having them prodded or AfD'd. --Mkativerata (talk) 19:45, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Withdrawn After reading these comments, I see the difficulties of judging whether an article about a product falls under A7 or not. Although I still think its neccessary to remove such articles faster than usual, it seems the community consensus is firmly against this. Therefore, I withdraw this proposal, but might propose a change to PROD/AfD later instead. Thanks very much for all of your opinions. Regards, Blodance the Seeker 02:22, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The flip side of G8

I've noticed the frequency with which contributors start pages as love notes, or in order to implore the objects of their affection. It's the opposite of an attack page, but notwithstanding the warmth of sentiment, it's not only inappropriate to use Wikipedia as such a forum, it could be viewed as intrusive, and, in its way, threatening to the subject. A current example: [11]. I propose a clause to the attack rationale, or a re-wording that supports the blanking of any overtly personal content, whether negative or idolatrous. Either may constitute harassment. 99.156.69.78 (talk) 05:23, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

There's no need for criteria for blanking, just use common sense. If an article consists entirely of attempts to communicate with the subject of the article, CSD:A3 (no actual content) applies. Stifle (talk) 16:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
And affection pages like "X is the hottest/coolest/etc. guy/girl of the world" usually qualify for A7 as well. Regards SoWhy 16:33, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. The only rationale/template I have seen in which the blanking of a new page is practiced is for G8. It just happened that I encountered several bended-knee type love note articles almost simultaneously, and it got me thinking, always a dangerous prospect. Much appreciated, 99.156.69.78 (talk) 21:52, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

G6 used for blank pages?

Plastikspork was recently using G6 as a rationale for deleting blank pages. This doesn't seem uncontroversial to me at all -- the difference between a page history and its talk-page being available to future editors or not is often significant.

This made me think of excellent uses for pure wiki deletion which only work if 'blank' is never used as a reason to delete page histories. A clarification on the value of the blank page would be useful. +sj+ 08:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, I suppose that all depends on what was in the history. Example? –xenotalk 16:36, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
I took a quick glance and it looks like the deletions were related to a recently deleted template. So the page had 2 edits, 1 adding the template, 1 removing it. I don't think keeping that history around is that important nor do I think deleting pages like that is controversial. A blue link should typically lead to content, not a blank page. –xenotalk 16:38, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Depends on the page I'd say. If the history is clearly of no value to other editors (only vandalism etc.), one can reasonably say it's uncontroversial cleanup. Everything else of course isn't but G6 is not intended for it anyway. As Xeno points out, those deletions he mentions at least are valid G6 deletions imho since the addition or removal of a deleted template is really nothing anyone will ever need to know when discussing the article in question. Regards SoWhy 16:44, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
I would be happy to undelete any if someone is interested. I don't believe any of the pages that I deleted had more than two edits (one to add the banner and one to delete it). I agree that if there is something of value in the edit history, we shouldn't simply delete it under G6. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 00:10, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

A3

Criteria A3 is being tested at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/130s BC, depending on outcome a change to language here may be required. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:10, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

If there's a version with content that can be reverted to, that should always be the solution, rather than deletion. That A3 doesn't state so explicitly should be corrected, yes. Cheers. lifebaka++ 19:14, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
That's true for any criterion: If a previous revision that can be reverted to is not eligible for speedy deletion, than the whole page is not eligible. Any other interpretation would mean that one could simply remove all content, then tag it A3. There is no reason to change anything and also an AFD should not be used to decide to remove such an article since those articles are a standard tool for navigation and removing those without current content should only be done after a wider discussion. Regards SoWhy 19:17, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, blanking or savagely cutting back a page in order to get it speedily deleted under A3 (or A7 for that matter) is disruptive, and there should be wording to note this. Fences&Windows 22:39, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
Under "Procedure for administrators" the page already says "Before deleting a page, check the page history to assess whether it would instead be possible to revert and salvage a previous version." and in the lead it says "Before nominating a page for speedy deletion, consider whether it could be [...] reverted to a better previous revision". I think that the current wording is quite clear that none of the criteria can be applied when there are previous revisions to revert to. I see no reason why it should be included in A3 (or A7) specifically, it's the same with G11, A1, G12, etc. Regards SoWhy 23:10, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
In this case there was no previous content to revert to, the article had been empty of content since it was created in 2002. Content (unreferenced) has been added to the article so A3 no longer applies. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:37, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
I see no reason for any change. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:40, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
I also don't think there's anything wrong here. Stifle (talk) 14:00, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Redirects created by moving WikiProject pages

I have been working on consolidating, organizing and standardizing pages of a WikiProject I'm a member of. Some of this effort including moving scattered pages to become subpages of a recently created department page. When moving the scattered pages, redirects were left behind. Most of these redirects are for low-traffic pages and would not be particularly useful--the few incoming links at the old page location were changed to the new location or eliminated through other reorganization efforts. So I have two questions: (1) Is it practical to speedy delete these redirects? (2) If practical, would one of the redirect criteria be the appropriate tag or should G6 be used? --LJ (talk) 00:16, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments: (i) if no links are left to those redirects (especially from outside the project) then it is safe and practical to delete them through either G6 (because it is project housekeeping) or R3 (because those links have little sense outside the project, especially after move) (ii) When you move a page, you have an option whether or not to leave a redirect behind. Materialscientist (talk) 00:25, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply--I will tag the redirects for deletion. One comment: The move page did not present an option to not leave a redirect (I did look for it) although there was a note to admins about this option. --LJ (talk) 00:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
That option is available to admins only, actually. Cheers. lifebaka++ 01:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Moving a page and choosing not to leave a redirect behind = deleting the original page and recreate it under a new title. Only admins have the right to delete pages. :p Blodance the Seeker 15:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Bots can do this too. –xenotalk 15:28, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Redirects with trailing commas

Readers here might be interested in this discussion of speedy deletion: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Redirects with trailing commas. DJ Clayworth (talk) 19:01, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Implausible but old redirects

Over the years a number of articles were created with trailing commas in their names, presumably in error, and were generally promptly moved to proper titles, in many cases leaving redirects behind. The redirects stayed around for 1-2 years and more. Recently User:Basilicofresco generated a list of such redirects, and began tagging them for deletion under WP:CSD#R3. Of course, R3 specifies "Recently created" redirects, the general reason being that if a redirect has been around for a while, external sites may be linking to it. User:Nancy declined a number of these deletion taggings, and i also declined several. User:DJ Clayworth deleted most of the pages that User:Nancy had declined, giving as his deletion log entry "‎R3: Recently created, implausible redirect" which was at least technically inaccurate, as the redirects were not "recently created". There was discussion of this at User talk:Nancy#Declining redirects and User talk:DJ Clayworth#Old comma redirects. After I requested DJ Clayworth to stop such deletions pending a discussion of the matter and an establishment of consensus on the subject he agreed to do so. However at least one other admin has continued such deletions.

It is my view that the Speedy deletion criteria are intentionally narrow, and should be observed strictly. It is also my view that IAR is not an appropriate justification for any page deletion ever. That said, it is hard to argue that these redirects have any positive value to Wikipedia. Perhaps we should broaden R3 to cover the case where the redirect is very unlikely to be the target of a link from an external site.

The matter is being discussed at WP:VPP#Redirects with trailing commas Your views are welcome there. DES (talk) 20:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

G5 - some clarification and discussion

I recently declined a speedy on Innocent Heart that Kww (talk · contribs) had tagged as G5. It seemed, and certainly as time has gone on, seems likely that the creator of the article is a sock (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Xtinadbest/Archive).

I declined the speedy on the grounds that G5 is for articles created by someone in contravention of a ban, not that any article created by a sock (in this case) that no-one else has edited should be deleted. I also felt that the article passed A7, so didn't delete it for that.

The article was subsequently deleted at AfD. At that AfD, NawlinWiki (talk · contribs) said she'd have speedy deleted under G5 as Kww presented. JamesBWatson (talk · contribs) agreed with my call, but said that there may be a question about the spirit of the criteria that we need to clarify. Kww on my talk page stated that "the purpose of going through a banned user's contributions and carefully obliterating them is to ensure that the banned user ultimately gets the point and ceases to contribute", and James and Nawlin's comments made me think that there is some desire to change this.

I'm starting this thread mainly to clarify consensus on this issue, namely:

If an article has been created by a sock/banned user, but otherwise is fine for all the other speedy deletion categories, should we delete it under G5. I'm pretty clear that that is not what the criteria say, but the question at hand is, should that be what they say?

For my money, it seems very pointy to delete articles that could be improving the 'pedia just to make a point to a banned user, but I can see the other side; obliterate their edits, and they might understand we don't want them here.

Discuss away! GedUK  09:56, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

After Ged_UK declined Kww's G5 nomination, a brief discussion took place between them here. In this discussion Ged_UK said "He hasn't been banned, he's been blocked. G5 would apply if he'd had a ban on say, Obama articles, and then created an Obama related article, G5 would apply. There's no reason to delete articles created by blocked users if there's nothing wrong with the article". There is no doubt at all that, by the current rules, Ged_UK is quite correct in saying that G5 applies only to banned users, not blocked users, and it would have been wrong to have made the speedy deletion. Comment struck as mistaken in light of careful reading of policy: see below. However, that leaves us, I think, with two questions: (1) is there any good reason for not applying the same policy to blocked as to banned users?, and (2) is it a good idea to delete acceptable content merely because it was introduced by someone who shouldn't have done so (whether because of a block or because of a ban), or is it better to allow the content to stand, as it is a useful contribution?.
Question (1) seems to me very straightforward. If we take the line that someone who is not allowed to edit Wikipedia will not be allowed to get away with doing so, then I see no reason why we should differentiate on the basis of how the "no editing" decision has been implemented. If anything I can see two arguments for regarding block-evasion as more unacceptable than ignoring a ban. Firstly, a block indicates that the community has decided that editing by the user is not acceptable at all, whereas a ban frequently indicates a more limited view that the user's edits should be restrained to some extent. Secondly, a blocked user who edits is likely to have actually taken some trouble to get round the block (e.g. registering a sock account); if the purpose of G5 is to convey the message "you will not get away with ignoring our restriction, so you may as well give up", then it seems to me that it is even more important to convey this message to someone who has shown a willingness to take action to thwart the community's decision than to someone who has merely overstepped the line of what they were told they could do. Consequently it seems to me that, if we are to keep G5 in something its present form, we should reword it to cover blocked users too.
Question (2) is much less straightforward. I think there is a good deal of value in both views: Ged_UK's view that "it seems very pointy to delete articles that could be improving the 'pedia just to make a point to a banned user" and Kww's view that we should delete "to ensure that the banned user ultimately gets the point and ceases to contribute". The dichotomy between these two attitudes occurs elsewhere in Wikipedia too: we have deletionists and we have inclusionists, both of whom have some sound and intelligent reasons to support their positions, but both of whom can at times have a tendency to see the other side as being purely obstructive. For myself, I am neither a pure deletionist nor a pure inclusionist, and I sometimes find myself on one side in a discusion, and sometimes on the other. However, in this case, (and quite a few others), I do find the deletionist argument on the whole more compelling. Out of all the 3 million articles on English Wikipedia the loss of one potentially acceptable article is a pity, but not a major issue. On the other hand consistently conveying the message "attempting to get round Wikipedia's policies and community decisions is a waste of time which has no chance of succeeding" has the potential to reduce the amount of time we waste on dealing with nuisance editors. This message might sometimes get through not only to the blocked or banned editor, but also to others who see it happening, and therefore help to slightly reduce future problems. One (possibly) good article lost is one out of three million; one block/ban defying editor persuaded to stop is one out of a much smaller number (I don't know haw many block/ban defying editors there are, but it will be nowhere near the million mark). If "You are not allowed to edit" turns out to really mean "We don't want you to edit, but if you do we will judge your editing by the same standards as anyone else's editing, and will let it stand if we would have let it stand for anyone else" then a banned/blocked editor has very little reason not to carry on editing. If, on the other hand, "You are not allowed to edit" turns out to really mean "You are not allowed to edit, and if you try to you will be wasting your time", then there is some hope they will eventually give up.
The conclusion of all that, as you will no doubt have realised, is that my choice would be to keep the present "page created by banned user = speedy deletion" rule, and extend it to cover blocked users too. Exactly similar considerations also apply to other edits by banned/blocked users apart from page creation. It is specified at Wikipedia:Ban#Enforcement_by_reverting_edits that edits by banned users can be reverted on sight, and I see no reason not to apply this to blocked users too. JamesBWatson (talk)
Does the length of the block affect your position? If it's a 24 hour block, and they edit as an IP, would you delete the article if there were no other speedy reasons to? After the block expired, they could recreate the page, and we'd be back where we were.
I'm not even sure that your summation of "page created by banned user = speedy deletion" is accurate, but I've seen very few of them since i've had the mop. If they were banned on one area, and created an article on another (like Obama in my example), would you delete under G5 as it now stands? GedUK  14:24, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Your example only applies to topic-banned editors. If an editor is under a topic ban on Obama, and creates one about yak-herding, there's no reason to delete the yak-herding article. That's the reason for topic bans ... they create a more surgical approach to an editor that only has problems maintaining discipline in a limited area.—Kww(talk) 14:51, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
"Does the length of the block affect your position?" In practice I would exercise discretion. I might sometimes decide that it wasn't worth bothering to delete. However, I do not think that this goes without saying. Presumably the user has been blocked for 24 hours because of uncooperative behaviour in the past, and if that user is so unwilling to cooperate now that they will defy the block rather than wait for one day, then we should consider whether there is a serious risk of further uncooperative behaviour in the future. I think there is a good case for taking the line that deletion will convey to that editor "See? You are back where you were. You can still create the article tomorrow if you like, just as you could have done if you had not defied the block. So your effort now has been wasted". This might well reduce the risk of defiance in the future. Certainly in many cases there would be no further defiance anyway, but then what has been lost by deleting? A tiny amount of time by a deleting admin, and a rather larger amount of time by the blocked user. So, in short, I would consider each case on its own merits, but I certainly do not think that the fact that the block is a short one precludes deletion.
"I'm not even sure that your summation of 'page created by banned user = speedy deletion' is accurate". Since you don't say in what way it is inaccurate I can't tell whether you have a valid point here or not. However, reading WP:CSD#G5 I can't see any doubt that "page created by banned user in violation of their ban having no substantial edits by others = speedy deletion" is accurate, and I was simply giving an abbreviated reference, assuming that we all knew the details that I wasn't bothering to specify. Of course I wouldn't delete in one area because the editor was banned from another area: that would not be "in violation of their ban". JamesBWatson (talk) 13:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
First, I think the banned vs. blocked discussion is a red herring in this particular case. With 20 sockpuppeting cases covering over 50 socks, no reasonable admin would ever unblock Xtinadbest. That is de facto banned.
As for the general case, I think extending G5 to cover articles created in defiance of a block would be a good idea. It actually covers general practice with sockpuppeteers. I can't see my own deleted contributions to verify, but I would say that over 90% of my G5s against sock-created articles are processed without any fuss.—Kww(talk) 14:51, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm going to expand a bit here ... I think the underlying issue is related to something I mentioned above: a confusion between "topic banned" and "banned". I agree that nothing in G5 should be interpreted to say that a topic banned editor cannot contribute in other areas. That goes to the heart of why topic bans exist: we have editors that simply cannot restrain themselves when dealing with some hot-button issue that is near and dear to them, but edit quite well in all other areas. If such an editor is banned from his problem area, there is no need to discourage him from creating other articles. To do so would be an unnecessary expansion of the scope of his ban.
For generally banned editors (and that includes temporarily banned editors that are currently blocked, in my view), the goal is to prevent them from editing. Period. That includes creating articles. G5 was introduced specifically to cover that case. I, as a non-admin, can remove all edits by Xtinadbest (and Dewan357, Brexx, Wiki-11233, among others), but I cannot delete the articles they create. G5 is supposed to be a simple mechanism for me to flag these articles to admins: as long as others haven't made significant edits to the articles, the deletion should be pretty much automatic once it is determined that the article was made by an editor that was blocked from editing.—Kww(talk) 19:21, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
"I think the banned vs. blocked discussion is a red herring in this particular case". I agree, up to a point. At first I thought that, despite agreeing that this editor was de facto banned, the absence of a de juro ban made Ged_UK's decision technically correct. Having now reread the blocking policy I have decided that was an error. The banning policy specifies that under certain circumstances a blocked user can be deemed to be banned. There are several statements about this, including Users who remain indefinitely blocked after due consideration by the community are considered "banned by the Wikipedia community". So we find that a blocked user who is evading a block may or may not be allowed to create a page and have it put through the normal AfD process. The trouble here, of course, is what constitutes due consideration by the community? Can we blame Ged_UK for making this mistake? I don't know the answer to that: it depends exactly how much of the situation Ged_UK was aware of at the time. If Ged_UK was aware only of the fact that the account used to create the article was blocked, then the view taken would have legitimately seemed to be technically correct, even if many of us would have made a different decision. If, on the other hand, Ged_UK was fully aware of the whole history then the decision becomes much more dubious. Xtinadbest had certainly been, as Kww says "de facto banned", having easily satidifued the blocking policy's standards for a block being deemed to be a ban. In addition Xtinadbest's user page was given a banned user tag on 20 October 2009 on, in effect, "due consideration by the community" grounds, so that Ged_UK's "He hasn't been banned, he's been blocked" was mistaken, and the article should have been deleted under G5. This may look like a rather long-winded way of repeating Kww's point that Xtinadbest was de facto banned, but what I am trying to convey is that, although I fully agree that in this case the decision was wrong as the user was in fact banned, nevertheless the blocked/banned distinction is not a total red herring, because the situation leaves room for this kind of mistake because of a lack of full knowledge. If Ged_UK did not know the full history can he/she be blamed for not checking up and finding out? Just how much checking is an admin expected to do over a speedy deletion nomination? On the other hand if blocks were treated exactly the same as bans for G5 purposes then no such problems would arise. All this is assuming that Ged_UK was not fully aware of the situation. If, as is possible, he/she knew full well that the editor in question was effectively banned, then I find it difficult not only to justify the decision to decline the speedy. However, I assume that an editor who writes "He hasn't been banned, he's been blocked" does not realise the situation. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
As for the general ban/topic ban distinction, I am actually surprised it is being discussed at all. It seems obvious to me a ban within a topic is treated exactly like a general ban, except that it applies only within that topic, with no restriction on editing elsewhere. For a topic-banned editor "page created by banned user in violation of their ban" means a page created within that topic; for a generally banned editor it means any page created by that editor. Nor can I see anything in the blocking policy which suggests otherwise. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I see that this thread has wandered somewhat off-topic, and I have done more than my share of taking it off-topic. I make no apologies, as the issues discussed are, I think, both relevant and worth discussing. However, I shall now try to return to the original question. The original purpose of the thread was to clarify consensus on one issue, namely: If an article has been created by a sock/banned user, but otherwise is fine for all the other speedy deletion categories, should we delete it under G5. I'm pretty clear that that is not what the criteria say, but the question at hand is, should that be what they say? I don't understand that at all. The full and complete wording of criterion G5 is Pages created by banned users in violation of their ban having no substantial edits by others. I don't see any way of reading that other than as saying that any page created by a banned user in defiance of their ban should be deleted, without any other considerations (except for "substantial edits by others"). It does not say Pages created by banned users in violation of their ban having no substantial edits by others and contravening some other speedy deletion criterion. Nor would it make any sense if it did so, as it would be redundant. Frankly I am bewildered at "I'm pretty clear that that is not what the criteria say": what else might anyone think it says? JamesBWatson (talk) 13:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
The three of us don't really constitute a representative sample of the Wikipedia community, so I have posted a link to this discussion at the village pump. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Can you clarify what's being asked? Is it whether, for the purpose of this criterion, "banned user" includes "sock of a blocked user"? (If so, then my answer would be yes, since we follow spirit rather than letter of the rule.)--Kotniski (talk) 14:37, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Several questions have been asked. The original one was whether G5 means that an otherwise perfectly good article can be speedily deleted simply because it was created by a banned user. However, the further question has been raised whether a block-evading user should be treated the same as a ban-evading user. In practice, yes this would mean a sock of a blocked user. My own view is the same as Kotniski's. However, there is a problem with that: the banning policy explicitly states that this is not so. Therefore the question arises should we change that aspect of policy? JamesBWatson (talk) 15:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't see where it "explicitly states that this is not so". I see the Ged5 UK thinks that, but I don't see that it says that. To my mind, the key comes down to "created by a banned user in defiance of their ban", which I believe includes:
  • articles created by topic-banned editors in the area of their topic ban
  • articles created by formally banned editors
  • articles created by temporarily banned editors (i.e. blocked editors)
  • articles created by de-facto banned editors
The last three seem redundant to me, and I wouldn't recommend actually rewriting G5 to be so explicit.—Kww(talk) 15:11, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, if an admin has understood it differently, then perhaps it should be reworded to avoid future misunderstandings. Perhaps just saying "Pages created in violation of a ban or circumvention of a block and having no substantial edits by legitimate users" would be enough.--Kotniski (talk) 15:18, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
The current criterion focuses on the user, as well as the action: "Pages created by banned users in violation of their ban...." How about something like: "Pages created by banned or blocked user, or by their sockpuppet, in violation of a ban or circumvention of a block...." --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
(1) Where the banning policy "explicitly states that this is not so" is at WP:BANBLOCKDIFF, where it states that "a blocked user who is evading a block" (unlike a banned user) "may still manage to get edits added or pages created, and those edits then have to go through the normal AfD or dispute resolution process". (2) SteveMcCluskey's wording seems good to me, except that I would leave out "or by their sockpuppet" because it's redundant, since a sockpuppet is the banned or blocked user. JamesBWatson (talk) 18:12, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Not being an admin I haven't been involved in such decisions, but it seems very strange to me that you'd even consider trying to show editors that evading the block is "a waste of time which has no chance of succeeding". Of course it could succeed - you know, we don't have any retinal scanners, and we don't want any. If someone registered a new account and didn't follow exactly in a banned user's footsteps, how would you know anyway? Any assumptions you make based on IP address are dangerous, because there are often two (sometimes more) editors at one location. It seems to me that blocks and bans can at most get people's attention and force them to shift away from the immediate controversy that got them in trouble. I think it would be well worth saving an article unless it appears to be a continuation of the underlying pattern of abuse that provoked the sanction. Wnt (talk) 18:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
That point is covered by the methods we use to detect socks in the first place. If they truly walk away from their problem areas and cause no further problems, there's no evidence to base a sockpuppeting case on in the first place.—Kww(talk) 18:46, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I think the heart of this problem is that there are many editors that are de facto banned, but not "officially" banned. In the past I have asked for bans on users for exactly this reason, that it makes it easier to deal with any socks, you can just delete or revert everything they did without even looking at it, because they are not supposed to be editing at all. I would imagine the majority of admins would have no problem treating the block-evading sock the same way, and indeed I have done so myself on occasion. It is essentially the same thing. Block length makes no difference. If they are socking to evade a block, they know they are not supposed to be editing Wikipedia, and letting their contribs stand will only encourage them to keep socking. Revert, block, ignore is almost always the best approach with these types of users, and now that someone has brought this up I think it is high time we go ahead and change the criteria to cover banned users and block evading socks. It sends a clear message that a block is on the person, not just the account, and should not be evaded by socking. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:09, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I think it would be appropriate to hold an article like this to a higher standard, but I don't like the idea of evaluating with authorship as the sole criterion. Such an article should have to do more than "assert notability" to be acceptable, but I'm not sure how to define the standards. Is having an inline citation sufficient, or would that lead to bogus citations being included by malicious blocked editors? It sounds like this doesn't come up very often, so perhaps that would be an acceptable standard.--otherlleft 15:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually, it comes up pretty often ... it's the rejection of the G5 delete that's rare.—Kww(talk) 17:08, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Fair enough - I was basing that observation on the discussion here which gave me that sense. What probably can't be determined is what number of decent articles are trashed that way. It's probably not too often but I expect it's enough that evaluating where the line is drawn between protecting the site from abuse and protecting the content from hasty deletion. --otherlleft 17:25, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I've really come to believe more and more in WP:DENY. When dealing with long-term abusive users, you will often find them creating a sock to "prove they can help" but because they are also often fixated on one article or subject they get caught rather quickly, and usually they haven't helped at all, just made the same type of edits that got them blocked in the first place. If we simply revert/delete everything they did and indef hardblock them without further discussion, it sends the message that we are not kidding around about them being blocked. If we instead begin discussing the relative merits of their edits, it gives them the attention they were looking for and will encourage them to continue socking. It's always struck me as inconsistent that we will revert or delete a banned users edits without even looking at them, but a block evading sock's edits, according to current policy, are to be treated like any other user's edits. Policies are supposed to reflect what the community wants, not dictate what it is to do, and I bet you most users don't see any real distinction between one category of user who is not supposed to be editing Wikipedia and another. As I mentioned before, this policy as it stands actually creates more drama because we end up having banning discussions for the sole reason that we can then delete/revert the editor without further cause. Isn't evading a block enough of a reason by itself? Beeblebrox (talk) 18:16, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Don't just focus on the creator but rather the content that the user created. Idiot Finder (talk) 00:55, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
The above post was made by a sockpuppet of an indefinitely blocked user. The only reason I am not deleting the post is that the following response to it would then be made meaningless. JamesBWatson (talk) 15:25, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
It's hard not to when an account is created specifically to defend the right of socks of blocked users to create articles.—Kww(talk) 01:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Fair enough. There may be occasions when a blocked or banned editor will sneak around in the shadows with the sole intention of creating a perfectly acceptable article, but Occam's razor doesn't encourage me to think that including blocked with banned is going to cause more harm than good. Speedy criteria need to be clear, and I believe this modification would be. But how should this be worded in regard to temporarily blocked editors? Do we delete if the article was created in circumvention of a block? What if it was created in a sandbox somewhere and moved to main article space after the block? The case of the temporary block needs careful wording.--otherlleft 02:33, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the "violation" language covers the sandbox case ... if it was created in the user's space and moved after the block expired, there isn't a violation at any point. I've made the change based on this discussion.—Kww(talk) 15:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I think this has been a good discussion, and the update is helpful. Thanks everyone! GedUK  09:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

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